The President was slurping down diet sodas -- one after another --during his Grand Jury Testimony. After twelve years of research into Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), I can assure you that President Clinton's erratic behavior and memory loss is quite probably from the Aspartame he consumes in the diet sodas.

Memory loss is #9 on the FDA's published list of terrible reactions to Aspartame. By his own admission, President Clinton said that he was blessed with a good memory, but that he and others are "shocked" by how much he has forgotten.

Obviously, no one remembers everything, and to forget at times can be convenient. However, I believe there is far more to his memory loss than anyone suspects, and it could be aspartame. (Aspartame can also contribute to unusual and excessive sexual appetites as well as sexual dysfunction).

Aspartame is one of the most dangerous food supplements ever approved by the FDA. The FDA's approval of NutraSweet was very murky in the first place. That's why the FDA will never admit it's harmful, even though it did publish a list of serious reactions to NutraSweet. All the FDA says is that victims of aspartame poisoning are either "mistaken" or "over-reacting."

My own daughter was first incapacitated due to Aspartame poisoning about twelve years ago, but she was consuming diet soda for perhaps two years before anyone realized what it was doing to her. She had epileptic-type seizures, a drastic personality change, and unbelievable intellectual changes. She began to lose her memory. She also had many other problems from Aspartame including a loss of some of her vision. She stopped consuming diet soda after a long fight that nearly drove us insane. There was no Internet then, so my husband and I had to spend nearly a year writing to doctors and scientists all over the country to collect information to convince her to stop drinking Aspartame. We even took her to a hospital in Boston and had electrodes implanted into her brain for three days to see what was going on. The "what" was clearly Aspartame Poisoning.

All her problems were a direct result of her consumption of Aspartame/NutraSweet. She finally stopped drinking sodas containing Aspartame, and she had a complete recovery and has had an excellent job since then. (My daughter is a brilliant girl who once won a prestigious scholarship in competition with more than one million students from the entire country. To see her nearly destroyed by diet soda was devastating.)

She saw many physicians when she first became ill. She first went to a neurologist who decided that she had temporal lobe epilepsy and treated her for it – without success - because she didn't have temporal lobe epilepsy.

She had to see an ophthalmologist because she was losing her vision. She saw a second neurologist. She even went to a psychologist. And, she ended up in Boston. What an awful waste of time and money -- from something as avoidable as diet soda. And, why did it take so long to help her? Because most physicians and their patients are clueless when it comes to connecting the myriad of bizarre symptoms of aspartame poisoning with the consumption of what is supposedly a safe substance – approved by the FDA!. They don't notice "side-effects" when they are staring them in the eye.

And, please believe me when I say that my daughter's case is not unique. Thousands and thousands of victims of Apartame poisoning have been trying for more than a decade to have this artificial sweetener banned from the marketplace. These victims are not "mistaken" or "over-reacting."

Dr. David Kessler (once an FDA Commissioner) said in a JAMA article that only 1% of serious problems are ever reported to the FDA. The FDA admits to receiving more than 10,000 complaints about aspartame. So, in the case of aspartame, that would balloon the real number to over one million!

All aspartame victims have busy lives. They wouldn't take their own valuable time to fight to have aspartame banned from our food supply if they didn't think it was crucial to the health of the American people and to others all over the world.

Here is a copy of a position paper on the subject written by Dr. H. J. Roberts:
                                  

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 Nonpolitical Comments and Public Health Implications

I viewed the released deposition of President Clinton for a Grand Jury on 8/17/98 as a concerned and objective citizen. Initially, there was no intent of expressing a professional opinion. Several aspects impressed me.

* There was repeated reference by the President to his memory
("My memory is not clear"; "I don't remember when I said it: "I was struggling to remember them").
This contrasted with his assertion, "I have been blessed with a good memory."

* Persons at the White House apparently expressed concern over gaps in his memory during recent years.

* The President repeatedly drank Diet Coke(R) during the deposition, and has been observed drinking aspartame (NutraSweet(R)-containing cola for years.

The aspartame issue is highly relevant. For over a decade, I have encountered and extensively researched a condition affecting millions that I named Aspartame Disease. Its manifestations are detailed in more than a score of professional articles and three books. The profound effects on brain function are emphasized, especially marked confusion and memory loss.

Specifically, my own data base of 1200 aspartame reactors includes 376 (31%) with these as major complaints. Many were young business and professional persons, drivers, pilots and air traffic controllers who sought consultation because they feared the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Fortunately, their confusion, impaired memory, headaches, depression, aberrant behavior, personality changes and related features improved or disappeared within several weeks after abstaining from aspartame products in most instances.

These opinions and suggestions are pertinent. First, the use of mind-altering drugs can influence the testimony of persons taking them.

(Aspartame was originally intended as a drug to treat peptic ulcer.)

Second, I believe that President Clinton's physician should advise him to avoid ALL aspartame products, including gum -- at least on a trial basis.

Third, aspartame products ought to be declared an "imminent public health threat," and removed from the market as I have repeatedly urged the FDA and members of Congress. In the present context, I believe that aspartame may be accelerating Alzheimer's disease! The clinical and scientific evidence appears in my book, DEFENSE AGAINST ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE! A RATIONAL BLUEPRINT FOR PREVENTION (Sunshine Sentinel Press; 1 800-814-9800).

My medical and scientific credentials are noted in Who's Who in America, Who's Who In the World, Who's Who in Science and Engineering, Who's Who in Medicine and Health Care, and The Best Doctors in the U.S.

 H. J. Roberts, M.D., F.A.C.P.F.C.C.P

                                     ***********************************

If President Clinton really wants to know what's wrong with his memory, he'll stop drinking diet soda immediately. He should see an improvement in his memory within a few months.

It is important for someone in Washington to investigate the dangers of diet soda, and even the possible link between President Clinton's consumption of diet soda and his memory loss.

More pertinent facts about Aspartame:

For many years, the FDA refused to approve Aspartame because of the documented seizures and brain tumors it caused in laboratory animals.

When President Reagan (a friend of Searle) took office in 1981, he asked the FDA Commissioner to approve it, and the man refused. So, President Reagan fired the FDA Commissioner and appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes to do the deed.

There was great opposition, so a Board of Inquiry was set up. The Board said not to approve Aspartame. Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes overruled his own Board of Inquiry and approved Aspartame in dry foods. In 1983, with acting FDA Commissioner Mark Novitch, he approved Aspartame for carbonated beverages, in spite of a thirty-page protest from the National Soft Drink Association asking for a delay of approval until further evaluation verified its safety. Then, when he was under investigation for conflicts of interest, Dr. Hayes went to work for Burson Marstellar, the manufacturer’s public relations firm, for $1,000 a day. In 1993, the FDA approved Aspartame in baked goods, even though they themselves admitted it couldn’t be heated!

There are numerous documents that show that the late Dr. Adrian Gross, an FDA toxicologist, and many, many other physicians and scientists, tried to prevent Aspartame from ever being approved. For example, Dr. Gross said, "We have uncovered serious deficiencies in Searle’s operation and practices which undermined the basis for reliance on Searle’s integrity. . .

Searle has not submitted all the facts or experiments to the FDA, retaining unto itself the un-permitted option of filtering, interpreting, and not submitting information . . an attitude of disregard for the FDA’s mission of protection of the public health . . conduct which compromises the scientific integrity of the studies." He also indicated that Searle "did other terrible things. For instance, animals would develop tumors while they were under study. Well, they would remove these tumors from the animals."

Dr. Gross also said, "The report of the Task Force submitted in March 1976 in essence constituted a stinging indictment of Searle, and it contained various recommendations for regulatory action including referral to the Justice Department for review of possible criminal violations of the law."

On January 10, 1977, in a thirty-three page letter, FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill recommended to U. S. Attorney Sam Skinner that a grand jury investigate Searle for "apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, Title 21, Unites States Code Section 331, 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 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." 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.

In 1985, Senator Howard Metzenbaum introduced a bill entitled "Aspartame Safety Act of 1985." It required quantity labeling of Aspartame on food items and mandated that there be a moratorium on new uses of Aspartame until independent tests could be conducted under the auspices of the National Institute of Health, 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. (Monsanto bought Searle in 1985.)

"Retired" Senator Metzenbaum recently mentioned that he told Dr. David Kessler that the case on Aspartame should be reopened because it never should have been approved. A physician told the FDA that 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 prosecute anyone who participated in the fraudulent placement of Aspartame in the marketplace as well as those who worked so diligently to keep it on the market.

Did Dr. Kessler listen to anyone? No! Without public notification, he approved Aspartame in blanket form in June 1996. The FDA protected the manufacturer by refusing to require chemical breakdown tests of the drug.

As reported in "Food Chemical News", that important work of showing how NutraSweet "breaks down" was recently completed by 11-year-old Jennifer Cohen of Oradell, NJ for a school science project. Using sound principles and double blind testing, she developed and ran her tests like a professional. For ten weeks, she stored seven cans of Diet Coke in a refrigerator, and seven cans at room temperature and seven cans in an incubator (at 104 degrees Fahrenheit). The results were startling.

The soda "broke down" and released two deadly neurotoxins -- formaldehyde and diketopiperazine, (DKP) a brain tumor agent. The soda was analyzed by Winston Laboratories in Ridgefield, NJ.

According to "Food Chemical News," the FDA said it wasn’t surprised that someone would find formaldehyde and DKP in diet soda. The news was not a surprise to Dr. H. J. Roberts, either, because he wrote about Aspartame and formaldehyde and DPK in 1990. An FDA staffer said that the FDA knows that formaldehyde and DKP are in diet soda. However, the FDA claims  that formaldehyde and DKP "are not there in sufficient quantities to cause a safety concern." The thousands of victims of Aspartame poisoning do not agree with the FDA!

Apparently, Aspartame did violate the Delaney clause’s "zero-tolerance"law. The late FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, told Congress that it violated the Delaney Amendment because it triggered brain tumors, astrocytomas , (the first stage of the deadly glioblastoma now said to be rampant in the population ), and his last words were, "and if the FDA violates its own laws, who is left to protect the public?" His words are in the Congressional Record.

The Bressler (1977) report exposed mammary, uterine, and ovarian tumors.

James Bressler, leader of the FDA Task Force, said, "The question you have got to ask yourself is: Because of the importance of this study, why wasn’t greater care taken? The study is highly questionable because of our findings. Why didn’t Searle, with their scientists, closely evaluate this, knowing full well that the whole society, from the youngest to the elderly, from the sick to the unsick . . . will have access to this product."

Most physicians have been kept in the dark about the dangers of Aspartame. So many people visit their physicians with bizarre complaints, but the complaints are never linked to Aspartame because the FDA and the manufacturer say that there are no problems. .

One of the most distressing facts is that so many pregnant women and children consume Aspartame without the slightest idea of the dangers. Pregnant women drink diet sodas without realizing that Aspartame could cause them to abort or could cause birth defects to their unborn child. It’s even in over-the-counter and prescription medicines. I simply can’t believe that the FDA is permitted to continue its approval of Aspartame without any concern as to how it was approved and how it is affecting thousands of clueless Americans. The FDA should be protecting families from a deadly neurotoxin that destroys brains, nervous systems and optic nerves.

Today, even air travel is more hazardous because Aspartame is a seizure-triggering drug, and pilots who drink diet sodas are having seizures in the cockpits of commercial airliners. And the story goes on and on. Betty Martini, of Atlanta Georgia, the founder of a group demanding an FDA recall of Aspartame, has contacted influential people in Washington from the President on down. She has even tried the GAO, the Justice Department, the FDA and Newt Gingrich. Betty Martini sent the FDA 26 questions nearly two years ago. Recently, she heard from Newt Gingrich’s office that that the FDA now says that they will have to ask their attorney about how much they can say in answering Betty’s questions. In other words, if they simply answer the questions truthfully, they know they would have to recall Aspartame.

Even the CDC, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Resources, helped conceal the problems. They did a damning investigation and then added a summary that conflicted with the report. The CDC report was done at a time when there were relatively FEW people using Aspartame, when it was only in a few hundred products and from only a short period of time. It is estimated that over 9000 products now incorporate Aspartame as a sweetening agent. This CDC report does NOT cover the majority of over 200 million users around the world, many of whom have been using Aspartame-laced products for over 17 years. This means they could NOT foresee, nor report upon, the long-term problems caused by constant micro-doses of methanol, formaldehyde, and formic acid, along with a continual bombardment of aspartic acid, phenylalanine, that converts to diketopiperazine (DKP, a tumor agent), reduced levels of serotonin, and the many other changes that may take place in a given victim.

What it all boils down to is that it’s too much of a hassle for anyone in Washington to care. BUT, THAT ISN’T RIGHT! What’s done should be Undone!

It was the United States that put the poison on the market, and it should be the United States that stops it. Should the entire world look at us and ask why we poisoned the food in 100 countries of the world? It has been estimated that 5 out of 7 people who consume Aspartame have a reaction, but they don’t always connect Aspartame with the reaction.

Interested in additional information? Check out http://www.Dorway.com.

                                                                                         Sincerely,

                                                                A Concerned Mother.