Subject: Aspartame and Obesity, Clinical Effects
Date: Oct 14, 1995
From: Betty Martini <betty@pd.org>


(Note:McDonald's sells Diet coke, yogart and possibly other products
with aspartame DB)


 With regard to obesity (obesity report surpressed in England), I
think this is due to aspartame sold as  NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful,
and no telling what since the patent expired,  and its now in 5000
products and climbing!  In the Congressional Record, May 7, 1985 it
says:

"Aspartame has been demonstrated to inhibit the carbohydrate induced
synthesis of the neurotransmitter serotonin (Wurtman affidavit ).
Serotonin blunts the sensation of craving carbohydrates and thus is
part  of the body's feedback system that helps limit consumption to
appropriate  levels.  Its inhibition by aspartame could lead to the
anomalous result of  a diet product causing increased consumption of
carbohydrates."

NutraSweet was never a diet product.  It was discovered by a Searle
chemist while testing a peptic ulcer drug and was intended to be a
drug.  Then the chemist got some on his finger and found out it was
sweet.  Dr.  Wurtman is a brilliant doctor at MIT but he changed sides
after writing  about aspartame's hazards and became a consultant for
NutraSweet.  The National  Soft Drink Association wrote a 30 page
protest which is part of this  congressional record stating they used
the wrong test (would not pick up  aspartic acid), used the wrong
solution (tested in a buffered solution  instead of beverage matrix,
did not test for breakdown products (a  witches brew - methanol
converts to formaldehyde and then formic acid -  ant sting poison, and
phenylalanine breaks down to DKP, a brain tumor  agent), and didn't
test for temperature elevation (at 86 degrees  aspartame liberates
methanol in the can - methanol is a severe metabolic  poison!)

These are the devastations of aspartame (masquerading as a sweetener):

1.  Devastation of the Nation's Health.  There are 92 documented
medical  reactions including seizures, blindness and death.

2.  Hazard to American Aviation.  Pilots have reported grand mal
seizures  in the cockpits of airliners.  Many have lost their
medicals.  Hazards  reported in many aviation journals including those
of the Navy and Air  Force.  This Russian Roulette with 400 passenger
planeloads must stop.

3.  Infertility, birth defects and mental retardation in children.
Irreversible damage to the fetal brain and developing child.  While
the  NutraSweet company puts out ads saying its safe for the pregnant
woman  to use aspartame, in reality she could lose her baby because
fetal tissue  does not tolerate methanol.  Dr. Louis Elsas (Pediatric
Professor at Emory University) said at a hearing before the U.S.
Senate Committee on Labor  and Human Resources (examining NutraSweet
health and safety concerns 11/3/87) "I have spent 25 years in the
biomedical sciences, trying to prevent  mental retardation and birth
defects caused by excessive phenylalanine.   And therein lies my basic
concern that aspartame is in fact a well-known  neurotoxin and
teratogen (writer's note - something that causes birth  defects),
which in some as yet unidentified dose will both reversibly in  adult
and irreversibly in the developing child or fetal brain produce
adverse effects."  He goes on to tell how phenylalanine concentrates
in  the placenta and causes mental retardation.
4.  Epilepsy and other seizure disorders.  In an original study by
Searle, Dr. Harry Waisman was asked to study the effects of aspartame
on  primates.  Seven infant monkeys were fed the chemical in milk.
One died  after 300 days. 5 others had Grand Mal Seizures.  Searle
deleted these  findings when they submitted his study to the FDA.
Monsanto bought  Searle in 1985.  Researchers at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology  surveyed 80 people who suffered brain
seizures after eating or drinking  products with Aspartame.  Said the
Community Nutrition Institute: "These  80 cases meets the FDA's own
definition of an imminent hazard to the  public health, which requires
the FDA to expeditiously remove a product  from the market.

It showed be noted that because Monsanto funds trade organizations
like  the American Dietetic Assn., and American Diabetic Assn., etc.
physicians  were never given the information on aspartame.  They think
its just a  safe sweetener.  So when people have seizures they don't
associate it  with aspartame.  Dr. H. J. Roberts, author of books on
aspartame and the  world expert, attended the American College of
Physicians Conference here  in Atlanta and I went with him.  In
Neurology, one professor said:  "Please can somebody tell us where all
these seizures are coming from -  no matter how off the wall it may
be."  As Dr. Roberts says, patients  spend huge sums of money for
diagnostic tests but get no results until  they abstain from
aspartame.

5.  Connection with Persian Gulf Syndrome:  A soldier told me they
could  drink water and diet soda which sat in the Arabian sun up to 8
weeks.   Temperature inside the can was probably 150 degrees as it was
120 degrees  there.  He said the guys who drank the diet soda have the
syndrome.   Symptoms are identical to NutraSweet Disease:  Memory
loss, chronic  fatigue (methanol breaks down the immune system),
headaches, insomnia,  joint pain, vision and equilibrium loss, etc.,
etc.  On 60 Minutes a  couple of weeks ago one soldier talked about
the burning tongue.  A woman  on Internet (Brandi J.) had just emailed
her story of how she had this  burning, tingling reaction to drinking
Diet Pepsi.  She said Pepsi said  it was the "sweetness" breaking
down, and sent her a new case.  Methanol  (a human specific poison) is
what gives it the sweetness and when it  breaks down to formaldehyde
it is bitter and burns the tongue.

One lady I met made the caps for the Persian Gulf and they were told
only  to send things that were sugarfree and thousands and thousands
of packets  of Diet Kool-Aide were sent with the caps!  These packets
mixing  chemicals and aspartame like this and Slimfast are some of the
worst.   They have caused a lot of bad reactions.

6. Criminal violence, manic depression, anxiety and suicide.
Phenylalanine in aspartame lowers the seizure threshold in the brain
and  blocks serotonin production.  Today our nation is swept by a rage
of  violence. Researchers attribute this in part to low brain
serotonin  levels inducing depression, rage and paranoia.  This is
what is causing  all these panic attacks; they subside when we get the
person off of  aspartame.

7.  The SIGHT of America.  The methanol in aspartame converts to
formaldehyde in the retina of the eye (ASPARTAME; METHANOL AND THE
PUBLIC  HEALTH, Dr. Woodrow Monte (Journal of Applied Nutrition,
Volume 36,  Number 1, 1984).  Many people are going blind.  In
October, l986  Washington based Community Nutrition Institute filed a
petition with the  FDA to ban aspartame because of blindness. This was
reported in the  Chicago, Sun-Times, Friday, October 17, l986.  One of
victims in the  article was Joyce Wilson.  In April, l984 he wrote
this article in a  local Atlanta newspaper:

"Aspartame killed my wife.  No words can express the agony and horror
sweet Joyce endured.  This poison destroyed her brain, ravaged all her
organs and blinded her.  She died at age 46 in 1991. .. I'm a man
without  a wife because the NutraSweet Company is a business without a
conscience."

We are constantly getting people off aspartame and when we get them in
time their vision does come back but many times by the time they are
warned its too late like in this case.  Dr. Roberts just wrote a paper
on  Aspartame and the Eye that I have available on email.

8.  Sacrifice of the diabetics.  How could anything be worse for a
diabetic than wood alcohol.  This is what killed or blinded thousands
of  skid row drunks during prohibition.  Monsanto funds the American
Diabetic  Assn., and the American Dietetic Assn. who recommend
NutraSweet for  diabetics and pregnant women.  What a crime.
Physicians seeing diabetics  lose their vision think it is normal
diabetic retinopathy but in reality  they are going blind.  When the
methanol converts to formaldehyde and  then formic acid the patient
has metabolic acidosis.  Physicians think  these are diabetic problems
when in reality its because they are  consuming a chemical poison.  It
is no wonder Dr. Roberts (diabetic  specialist) calls this ASPARTAME
DISEASE.  The pattern and the symptoms  are predictable and you can
tell them what they are suffering from before  you ask.  Also, the
American Diabetic Assn. knows - this is premeditated because they
refused to publish Dr. Roberts' abstract of diabetic  reactors to
aspartame, and he's been a member of the ADA for almost 40  years. It
was published in Clinical Research, Vol. 36, No. 3, 1988  489A.

Last year on October 1 we exposed the ADA here in Atlanta by giving
out  medical documentation on aspartame and its effect on diabetics at
their  walk-a-thon (sponsored by NutraSweet, of course).  We dedicated
the day  to Joyce Wilson whose son had married a week or so before and
on her  empty chair was one long stem rose.  We gave our press packs
with black  lace for mourning and a single long stem yellow rose in
her memory.

This year the ADA did it again, Oct. 1, and we were there again giving
out packets for the diabetic and their physician - but this time there
was not as many people.  We had gotten to so many last year.  A few
days  before we did the same thing at the Juvenile Diabetic walk-a-
thon where  almost 2000 participated sponsored by Coca Cola.  They had
a NutraSweet  Dessert!  In the ADA event 10/1 I snapped a picture of
such a toddler  walking with a Diet Coke!

9.  Connection to Alzheimer's:  Dr. Roberts has been researching
Alzheimers for 30 years and when aspartame was approved he noticed a
difference in his diabetic patients - they presented with memory loss
and  confusion.  He says the two amino acids in aspartame that are
neurotoxic,  aspartic acid and phenylalanine without the other amino
acids in protein,  and deteriorate the neurons of the brain.
Alzheimers, a 20th century  disease, is now the 4th leading cause of
death, with 4 million victims,  250,000 new cases each year and
100,000 deaths.  50% of all patients in  nursing homes are Alzheimer
patients including baby boomers.  When Joyce  Wilson  died she was
just like an Alzheimer patient - with no memory.   Dr. Roberts new
book:  DEFENSE AGAINST ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE; A RATIONAL  BLUEPRINT FOR
PREVENTION has already been nominated for a Pulitzer. (1  800 -814--
9800 - you can also get his tapes on aspartame at this number). Dr.
Russell Blaylock, neurosurgeon, in his book EXCITOTOXINS:  THE TASTE
THAT KILLS  1 800-814--9800, tells you that the ingredients in
NutraSweet  literally stimulate the neurons of the brain to death.

10.  Multiple Sclerosis.  People are being diagnosed with MS when in
reality it is methanol toxicity from aspartame.  It does reverse if
you  get them in time and we have seen some cases of vision return.
We at OPERATION MISSION POSSIBLE are a volunteer force in 50 states
distributing a warning flyer on NutraSweet worldwide.  We hope that
this  network can help us by getting the warning.  This is the
greatest  atrocity ever committed in the history of the FDA.  A Board
of Inquiry  convened by the FDA said not to approve aspartame because
of the seizures  and the brain tumors it caused in lab animals.  Dr.
Arthur Hull Hayes,  head of the FDA, over-ruled his own Board of
Inquiry and approved  aspartame. Then he went to work for Searle's
Public RElations firm and  refused to speak to the press for 10 years.

The FDA abuse email number is fdaabuse@hr.house.gov

We hope you'll take advantage of it and report all cases.  We also ask
all people to take the "no aspartame test" and send us their case
history  by email or snail mail:

MISSION POSSIBLE P. O. BOX 28098 Atlanta, Georgia 30358

We also ask all people to take anything with NutraSweet back to the
store. Remember they cannot sell it if its open.  Also, they approved
this poison in baked goods even though aspartame cannot be heated
because  of the breakdown products.

You will run into this excuse from NutraSweet and the FDA:  "But there
is  more methanol in oranges than in aspartame".  Don't be fooled
because in  oranges there is always ethanol which is the classic
antidote to methanol  toxicity.  It is in the same journal:
ASPARTAME; METHANOL AND THE PUBLIC  HEALTH:  "Ethanol, the classic
antidote for methanol toxicity, is found  in natural food sources of
methanol at concentrations 5 to 500,000 times  that of the toxin.
Ethanol inhibits metabolism of methanol and allows  the body time for
clearance of the toxin through the lungs and kidneys."

I was contacted by the National Academy of Child Development and told
that learning disabilities are at 50%.  Aspartame is frying their
brain.  They said they would make 10,000 copies of a packet I sent
them to send  to their l0,000 offices.  A physician this last week
told me that only in  America do you see the Attention Deficit
Disorder and Learning Disabilities. That's because there is so much
aspartame here in this country including  over the counter drugs,
bakery products at the grocery and even  antibiotics and prescription
drugs like Questran.  As Dr. Roberts says:  the aspartame is causing
what the drug is suppose to prevent.  I have the  doctors address.  I
believe in other countries parents are probably more  concerned about
their children not getting these products.  Here its in  too many
things to avoid.

McDonalds sells Diet coke, yogart with aspartame and who knows what
else.  We must save the children from whats happening.

We hope McLibel Network can help.

                       Betty Martini    Operation Mission Possible

P.S.  Please take it back to the store!

Betty Martini Domain:  betty@pd.org UUCP:  ...!emory!pd.org!betty

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