---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 12:27:59 -0500 (EST) From: Betty Martini Reply-To: Ban-GEF@lists.txinfinet.com To: web@usdoj.gov Cc: mfriedman@oc.fda.gov, jane.garvey@faa.dot.gov Subject: Open Reply to Justice Department: RE: FDA/Monsanto (NutraSweet) - Mass Poisoning of the American public and 100 countries of the world with aspartame (NutraSweet). (Long) Time For Justice (Note to all lists, we want this published around the world, please pass on to all journalists, and media lists To: Attorney General Janet Reno Attention: Eugene M. Thirolf, Director Office of Consumer Litigation, Civil Division Thank you, Mr. Thirolf, for your November 13 corrospondance in which you state: "FDA is charged by Congress to protect the public health by prohibiting the manufacture and distribution of unapproved drugs. The Department of Justice has responsibility for prosecution of criminal and civil cases arising under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, Title 21, United States Code Section 331. Cases are referred to the Department generally through FDA's Chief counsel after FDA has conducted an investigation" In this instance FDA is the problem, as that agency has approved the known poison aspartame [NutraSweet, Equal] for use as a general sweetener. For 16 years FDA denied approval, partly because one aspartame breakdown chemical is diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent that triggered brain tumors in rats it was tested on. FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill on January 10, 1977 addressed a 33 page letter to U.S. Attorney Sam Skinner that a grand jury investigate Searle for "apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, 21 U.S.C. 331, [the law you refered to above] and the False Reports to Government Act, 18 U.S.C. 1001, for "their willful and knowing failure to make reports to the Food and Drug Administration required by the Act 21 U.S.C. 355, and for concealing material facts and making false statements in reports of animal studies conducted to establish the safety of aspartame". FDA called special attention to studies of the effects of NutraSweet on monkeys and hamsters, which died or had seizures in the tests. These reports Searle submitted to FDA, and they were fraudulent.( Searle was bought by Monsanto in l985. It was an open and shut case, so Searle's lawyers hired the U.S. Prosecutors, Skinner and Conlon, and the case died when the statute of limitations ran out a few months later. The Godfather hired the district attorney! For years FDA flatly refused to approve this deadly poison. When the Reagan administration came in Arthur Hull Hayes was appointed as FDA Commissioner to do the deadly deed. A Public Board of Inquiry was set up which did not approve aspartame, so Hayes simply overruled the PBI and approved it anyway. Then Hayes, while under investigation for conflicts- of-interest hired on as a consultant to NutraSweet's PR firm, Burson Marstellar. Score another one for the Godfather! But of course, you know this already. Hundreds of NutraSweet users began to complain of horrific symptoms: blindness, comas, headaches, memory failure, an entire spectrum of neuropathological reactions; so the Communicable Disease Center was asked to investigate. The November 1994 report reviewed 231 of 592 cases and catalogued grave reactions: aggressive behavior, disorientation, hyperactivity, extreme numbness, excitability, memory loss, loss of depth perception, liver impairment, cardiac arrest, seizures, suicidal tendencies, severe mood swings and DEATH! The evidence was damning, but then the Spin Doctors took over. Few will read the whole report, they'll just look over the summary written by Frederick Trowbridge. It's a coverup that completely contradicts the data: "Information based on data as described in the report, indicated a wide variety of complaints that are generally of a MILD NATURE.' Mild cardiac arrest, Mild grand mal seizures, Mild epilepsy, Mild suicidal tendencies and Mild death! I'm sure the victims were glad to learn it was nothing serious! We're putting the entire 146 page CDC report on the web for the world to see. CDC is part of the Department of Health and Human Services - the FDA! Trowbridge's job was to whitewash evidence and protect the Monsanto/FDA incestuous relationship. FDA is simply Monsanto's branch office in Washington. The l977 FDA 76 page Bressler Report is a key document. It was the culmination of a priority investigation at G. D. Searle's laboratory in Skokie, Illinois. It compared the raw and summary data of a 115 week oral tumorgenicity rat study, against Searle's FDA submission. Jerome Bressler, the team leader, found missing raw data, errors and discrepancies in available data, exclusions of animals, organ masses and enlarged and atrophied organs. In every respect Searle's work was found wanting. FDA's Bureau of Foods ignored the Bressler Report. The complete 76 page document is displayed on the DORway web site. Searle's fraudulent reports on these studies precipitated federal prosecution. Consider FDA toxicologist Dr. Adrian Gross' testimony in the Congressional Record: "They lied and didn't submit the real nature of their observations ... and they did other terrible things, for instance animals would develop tumors while they were under study. Well they would remove these tumors from the animals." [without reporting them 1985b page S10826] By hiding their eyes FDA is complicit in the fraud and equally guilty for little packets of poison on 100 million American tables. Consider "Pivotal" Study SC-18862 52 week oral toxicity infant monkey study (SC-18862). This study orally dosed aspartame to seven infant Rhesus monkeys for 52 weeks, in work conducted at the University of Wisconsin Medical Center at Madison, Wisc. The work was reported in l977. All medium and high dose monkeys exhibited brain seizures, starting about seven months into the experiment. One monkey died. I don't understand how 6 out of 7 monkeys having a grand mal seizures proves safety!! But then again neither do I understand seizures, liver failure, and cardiac arrest, being classed as MILD! The consumer public has complained since the approval of aspartame in l981. Senator Orrin Hatch said no to congressional hearings but SEnator Howard Metzenbaum called for Congressional Hearings and he authored a bill that would have put a moratorium on aspartame, and a warning for pregnant women and infants. It would have required independent studies by NIH since the original studies were the target of an indictment for fraud that was never carried out. Due to heavy Monsanto lobbying the bill never got out of committee, and so the babies were sacrificed as their mothers consumed this deadly neurotoxin never realizing it could abort or cause birth defects to their unborn child. Searle/Monsanto and the FDA have always resisted having studies replicated . Why? Could it be that they had already done them and knew what they would show?! A translator has given me a notarized affidavit, admits Searle replicated these studies on humans in South America and she and a doctor translated them. She says she has had to live with the fact that the studies exposed how deadly the drug is as subjects left the studies developing seizures and brain tumors, and other horrific problems, two people dying under mysterious circumstances. The doctor who helped her translate was fired. And there have been other informants about unpublished studies. No wonder studies have been resisted. They have been done proving aspartame is a deadly, deadly poison, and the largest study has been done on consumers in 100 countries of the world as they go blind, get Alzheimers, have seizures and other horrific maladies. Aspartame destroys the brain, the central nervous system, the optic nerve, and ravages every organ in the body. According to a UPI investigation by Greg Gordon, Dr. Wurtman at MIT was actually threatened by Searle when he wanted to do studies on humans, and said Searle did not deny it. Quoting from the investigation: "Wurtman, who quit his job as a Searle consultant and became a vocal nutraSweret proponent, said he had been contacated by more than 200 persons who suspect they suffered seizures as a result of NutraSweet use. He said Dr. Gerald Gaull, a SEarle Vice President, visited his laboratory in l985 and threatened to veto funding by ILSI, the Washington based tax-exempt foundation, for his planned study into whether NutraSweet changes brain chemistry, lowering some humans' seizure thresholds. Gaull said "there's no way" Searle, with one of 12 votes on the ILSI panel, could veto a grant decision, but he did not deny making the threat. ILSI ultimately turned away Wurtman on grounds that Searle already had arranged for seizure studies at Yale University and New York's MOunt Sinai Hospital, studies that have drawn criticism because human volunteers were given aspartame only once or twice. " Dr. Wurtman has been on both sides. Cynthia Crossen who wrote The Tained Truth said: "The road to hell was paved with the flood of corporate research dollars that eagerly filled gaps left by slashed government research funding." The noted critic A. J. Liebling once acidly observed that "Freedom of the press belongs only to those who own one." To shorten lets put it this way: "When you pay you get your way!" When NutraSweet funded a study on birth defects the findings were disastrous. So they withdrew their funding and Dr. Diana-Dow Edwards had to pay for it. Then neither NutraSweet or the FDA would accept the findings. On 60 Minutes last year Dr. Ralph Walton said of the 90 "independent studies" 83 showed problems with aspartame!! When Dr. Walton did a study himself NutraSweet refused to sell him the aspartame!!! Could it be they knew what to expect? He purchased analytically certified USP grade aspartame from a distributor. The Institutional Review Board terminated the project because of the frequency and severity of psychiatric, neurologic, eye and other side effects.. In l986 the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington petitioned the FDA to ban aspartame because people were going blind. But the FDA again evidenced themselves on the side of the manufacturer. How many cases of blindness, retinal detachments, could have been saved if the FDA had concern for the consumer public instead of the handmaiden of the pharmaceutical and chemical industry. In speaking with Senataor Metzenbaum now with a consumer organization in Washington, he mentioned he told Dr. Kessler the case on aspartame should be reopened because it never should have been approved. Did just once the FDA show any kind of concern for the health and welfare of the people? No, without public notification Dr. David Kessler allowed blanket approval of this deadly neurotoxin, so this drug with biologic effects, could be used like sugar. Then he jumped ship amid allegations that he padded his expense account. How did Monsanto get away with it? They "fund" trade organizations and write their material for them. The public service commissioner cannot take money from power companies he regulatues but Monsanto is allowed to write checks to anyone who will help endorse their poison. The FDA has been told over and over and over again how dangerous this poison is, and they have gone to such limits to coverup that they even referred complaints to the Aids Hotline, as discussed in Congressional Hearings. In a statement many years ago Dr. James Bowen told the FDA aspartame was mass poisoning of the American public and more than 70 countries of the world. Dr. Bowen himself had been poisoned by it. and began slurring his words, methanol toxicity. Dr. Bowen told the FDA about aspartame: "There is the issue of the approval of aspartame for market, which has violated every principle of responsible science and responsible government. Everyone responsible for this hearing should at least completely review the approval process and the comments of the participants and observers who have so excellently elucidated all the malfeasance for public record such as Dr. Adrian Gross and many many others (all on the public record". He said: "Every known metabolite of aspartame is of marked or questionable toxicity and patently unsafe for human use. Methyl alcohol is metabolized to nascent formaldehyde in the eye, nervous sytem and other metabolically active organs. It immediately attacks and denatures the tissue setructurew proteins in which it is metabolized to nascent formaldehyde.".. The late FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross who tried to prevent approval of aspartame told Congress that aspartame violated the Delaney Amendment because it had been proven to trigger brain tumors. Its all a matter of public record. His last words to Congress were: "Given the "cancer causing potential of aspartame) how would the FDA justify its position that it views a certain amount of aspartame as constituting an allowable daily intakee or 'safe' level of it? Is that position in effect not equilvalent to setting a 'tolerance' for this food additive and thus a violation of that law? AND IF THE FDA ITSELF ELECTS TO VIOLATE THE LAW, WHO IS LEFT TO PROTECT THE HEALTH OF THE PUBLIC?" So, there, Mr. Thirolf, is the crime. The FDA violated its own law and betrayed the people's trust in approvaling a deadly poison for human consumption. And while they refused to approve aspartame for so many years because of the brain tumor issue, then they switched sides. Dr. John Olney, a renown researcher made world news last year when he disclosed in a journal that now the same brain tumors the rats sustained are now escalating in the population. The FDA immediately went to Monsanto's defense - no aspartame couldn't trigger brain tumors! Now we have a chemical holocaust throughout the world. Aspartame is now a disease and the plague is getting worse. Dr. Roberts has just authored a book on this plague called ASPARTAME DISEASE: THE IGNORED EPIDEMIC. The St. Louis Post Dispatch on 5/20/97 reported Dr. Virginia Weldon, VP for Public Policy at Monsanto as a top candidate to become Commissioner of the FDA!! If this happens Monsanto can then use the FDA address of their Washington Branch Office!! Dr. Bowen further told the FDA: "Watching FDA officials walk through the "revolving doors" and be further rewarded by being promoted to other positions of high public responsibility is clear evidence of a government out of control. For this reason, I am opposed to labeling aspartame content of food and drinks. To do so would imply that the government is taking some sort of responsible action.. when the only responsible action would be to immediately take aspartame off the market, fully disclose its toxicities, offer full compensation to the injured, public and criminally persecute anyone who participated in the fradulent placement of aspartame on the marketplace. This includes those who work so diligently to keep it on the market as well.".. And the complaints continue to flood in. Seizures are so rampant that we have reports of people sipping diet soda and losing control of their car, to wake up in the hospital. Pilots are having grand mal seizures in the cockpits of commercial airliners japardizing the lives of flight crew and passengers. Haynes Dunn who flew for continental told his story on Hardcopy when he had a grand mal seizure. Another pilot told how he blacked out on aspartame. If they had both been on the same plane at the same time would anyone have survived? And the FAA says they can't do anything about this because the FDA says its safe. How could such a thing be allowed? You might as well hand a pilot a handful of neurotoxin pills and a slug of methanol because there is no difference if he uses aspartame. You cannot play Russian Roulette with the lives of passengers and crew. Think about it - Mission Possible operations are around the world to do only one thing - warn consumers that aspartame is a neurotoxin and avoid use. Nobody is paid - just a humanitarian effort to save lives and educate . They say where there is smoke there is fire. This is an out-of-control blazing conflagation. Cases continue to pour in of the Classic Case of Aspartame Disease. These people are suffering from grand mal seizures, agonizing pains in their legs, vision loss, memory loss, chronic fatigue, panic attacks, fibromyalgia, depression, inability to make a decision, heart palpitations, tachycardia, joint pain, etc. central nervous system dysfunction and the rest of the 92 documented symptoms on the FDA Report. The coverup is over. The world now knows, and the world wants justice. The graveyards are filled with the victims of Monsanto/FDA. So, Mr. Thirolf, you see we're talking about being above the law and betrayal of the public trust. As evidenced by public record those there to solve the problem are the problem. This is the gravest charge in the history of humanity. We charge the FDA and Monsanto with GENOCIDE! Betty Martini 770 242-2599 ***************************************************************************** Mission Possible International 9270 River Club Parkway Duluth, Georgia 30097 Email: bettym19@mindspring.com