Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 17:15:41 -0400 To: ko26j@NIH.GOV From: betty martini Subject: Dr. Kenneth Olden, National Institutes of Health - Your letter about aspartame studies (OPEN LETTER) Cc: web@usdoj.gov, jane.garvey@faa.dot.gov Dear Dr. Olden: I have a copy of your letter to Honorable Rodney Frelinghuysen, on behalf of Barbara Metzler, and note you are the Director of the National Toxicology Program.  You say:  "We conducted neurotoxicity studies on aspartame and found that we could not detect any adverse effects on the nervous system in rodent models.  In addition, we are just beginning studies to determine if aspartame and other artificial sweeteners alter the tumor frequency in transgenic mice.  These studies have been designed in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration, and they should be completed in approximately one year."  Dr. Olden, in all due respect, its very difficult to do studies with aspartame and not have positive results.   But I see one problem, this "collaboration with the FDA"!  Asking the FDA to design studies on aspartame is like asking the Mafia to design results on the crime rate. You see, those there to solve the problem ARE THE PROBLEM!  And this is no secret, I just wrote Dr. Friedman of the FDA and asked him to stop sending out false propaganda.  In fact, you will find this document on www.dorway.com  It was the FDA who over-ruled a Board of Inquiry to approve aspartame after keeping it off the market for 16 years because of the brain tumor issue.  Nothing changed  except for stronger political power to get it approved.  I am founder of Mission Possible International.  We are a volunteer force warning the world off aspartame and taking the case histories.  And we're doing it because the FDA won't.  Frankly, they are not very original in getting rid of the complaints.  The Congressional Record even mentions how they referred them to the AIDS Hotline.  Then in l996 Dr. Kessler wanted to grant aspartame blanket approval so he had to show a decrease in aspartame complaints.  So the FDA said they had to change their bookkeeping system causing them to have to throw away hundreds of aspartame complaints, and then they stopped taking them.  I told you they weren't very original.  If you throw away what you have and refuse to take anymore you can show a decrease.  Mission Possible for a couple of years had cards victims could send to the FDA with their complaints checked off.  Sometimes as we talked to people in public we would even put the stamp on the card to make sure it was mailed.  The FDA disregarded them - and there were thousands.  The biggest study ever done on aspartame has been on-going since l981 on the general public in up to 100 countries of the world.  And we're the world volunteer force taking the complaints, and I can tell you that aspartame destroys the central nervous system and triggers brain tumors, blindness, Alzheimers, seizures and over 92 documented symptoms by the FDA's own report.  The original studies were the target of an indictment for fraud that was not carried out when two U.S. Prosecutors went to work for the law firm defending the case and let the statute of limitations expire.  When President Reagan asked the FDA to approve it they said "no". So he appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes to do the deadly deed, and he over-ruled a Board of Inquiry and then went to work for the manufacturer's PR firm.  For a FDA Commissioner to go to work for a PR firm is like an art director working in a pig farm!  And I can't imagine what he could do except send postcards home from Bermuda. One thing he hasn't done is speak to the press ever since including 60 Minutes when the famed researcher Dr. John Olney, who founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity, made world news over the brain tumor and aspartame.  Now lets talk about studies on aspartame.  Ralph G. Walton, M.D, who was also on 60 minutes, did a search of the peer reviewed medical literature utilizing multiple data bases, including Medline.  It yielded 526 citations on aspartame.  Of this number, 164 were felt to have relevance for questions of human safety.  Seventy four (74) studies has aspartame related industry sponsorship (Searle, the NutraSweet Company, Ajinomoto, or the International Life Sciences Institute Nutrition Foundation) and ninety (90) had non-industry related funding.  Some of the studies had multiple funding sources.  If as aspartame related industry was one of the sources, the study was considered industry sponsored. Of the Industry sponsored articles, 74/74 (100%) attested to aspartame's safety.  Of the non-industry sponsored articles, 83/90 (92%) identified a problem.  The seven (7) non-industry studies attesting to aspartame's safety were six (6) studies from the F.D.A. and one (1) literature review reflecting almost exclusively the industry sponsored research.  I rest my case, Dr. Olden, when the FDA gets involved aspartame becomes safe.  Of 83 INDEPENDENT studies, 100 % showed problems with aspartame! Doesn't that tell you something?  It is very easy to doctor studies and I will send you a transcript of an interview with neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., discussing the matter. Also, Rats tolerate methanol better than humans.  In fact, would you give your pregnant wife some Thalidomide?  Of course, you wouldn't but no problems were shown when studies were done on rats.  Maybe Monsanto (NutraSweet) could explain why they refused to sell Dr. Walton aspartame when he did an INDEPENDENT study.  Could it be because they knew what would happen when REAL WORLD aspartame was used with HUMANS, and not rats?  Dr. Walton purchased analytically certified USP grade aspartame from a distributor.  The frequency and severity of psychiatric, neurologic, eye and other side effects caused the institutional Review Board to terminate the project prematurely.  H. J. Robert, M.D. who has now declared Aspartame to be a Disease and world epidemic said: "With this revelation, corporate-neutral examiners should analyze the nature of the aspartame furnished by previous double-blind studies."  His new medical text on the plague will be available to the public in about 6 months.  The FDA won't tell you aspartame is a seizure triggering drug but look at their report of 92 documented symptoms and you will see four types of seizures listed.  A pivotal study used to approve aspartame, SC 18862, a 52 week oral toxicity infant monkey study showed 5 out of 7 monkeys fed aspartame had grand mal seizures, and one of the 7 died.  Dr. Olden, can you explain to me how that study shows SAFETY?  The FDA has in their possession 26 questions we have posed, sent to them by Newt Gingrich, and thats one of them.  They have had them about two years and have yet to answer them - and they can't truthfully without recalling aspartame.  I told them specifically not to send me a propaganda packet which is exactly what they did, and I'm sending you the propaganda answered by Mark Gold with references.  The last message I got was the FDA had to ask their attorneys would they could say.  I'm still waiting and I challenge them to answer!  So if you want to see neurological problems with aspartame fed the monkeys real world aspartame.  The only problem is as an animal lover I hate to see them inflicted with seizures.  However, according to the study when aspartame was withdrawn the seizures stopped.  And thats what is happening with humans - when they are having seizures we get them off aspartame, and the seizures stop.  I had a man call this morning terribly upset that his brother had seizures but fortunately he was taken to a medical center that had our material and they got him off aspartame.  Talking about human studies you will notice on www.dorway.com an affidavit from a translator who said the original manufacturer did do studies on humans in poor villages in South America and she and a physician translated them.  She said the studies were about 18 months long and that subjects were dropping out with brain tumors and seizures and all sorts of neurological horrors, and that the pregnant woman lost her baby.  She also said they discovered that aspartame hardens the synovial fluids.  This helped to understand the severe joint pain victims endure and why when they are dying they cannot walk without agonizing pain, many times misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia.  Dave Rietz who has the DORway web site that houses the Mission Possible files is a victim of aspartame.  I recently visited him and saw the addition put on his house for a Jacuzzi which is where he spent 10 years of his life because he couldn't walk without agony from the joint pain.  Don't you find it interesting that a few weeks off aspartame that joint pain that had plagued him for 10 years disappeared?  We tell people -"take the 60 day no aspartame test and watch your symptoms disappear".  Why am I so hard on the FDA?  Because they have full knowledge and no defense.  Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology surveyed 80 people who had brain seizures after consuming aspartame.  Said the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington, D..C., "These 80 cases meet the FDA's definition of an imminent hazard to the public health, which requires FDA to expeditiously remove a product from the market."  But the FDA ignored it.  In l986 the Community Nutrition Institute filed a petition with the FDA to ban aspartame because people were going blind, but again the FDA ignored it in loyalty to the manufacturer.  And you don't have to do studies to know aspartame blinds.  You may remember during prohibition that thousands of skid row drunks went blind or died on wood alcohol, and wood alcohol is in aspartame.  It converts to formaldehyde and then formic acid in the retina of the eye and destroys the optic nerve.  As people went blind on aspartame they were sent to the late Dr. Morgan Raiford, ophthalmologist, and specialist in methanol toxicity to be diagnosed.  The FDA cared not for the consumer public and lots more people  since have gone blind because the FDA turned its back on the people.  In fact, I asked the FDA where were the blindness cases on the report of 92 symptoms.  They said they list them under "vision loss".  They won't even write the word down so the public will realize aspartame is a blinding agent.  Dr. James Bowen almost died on aspartame too.  He wrote the FDA and told them it was mass poisoning of the American public and more than 70 countries of the world. What did the FDA do?  To ask the question is to answer it - again they simply ignored it.  There have been two Congressional hearings but manufacturer power prevented even a bill to get out of committee that would have required your institution to do studies on the problems that we are seeing all over the world and to which consumers complain - like the fact that aspartame is a drug and interacts with other drugs and changes brain chemistry.  Mission Possible also demanded the FDA to recall aspartame. Their answer was to give it blanket approval like sugar - a drug that changes the dopamine level of the brain, triggers seizures and destroys the central nervous system.  And then there is something I consider an insult to the suffering.  When they write the FDA and tell them of the horrors they have experienced on aspartame or the death of  a loved  one, does the FDA show any pity or concern.  NO - they send out a propaganda packet in an attempt to protect the manufacturer, and cover up their crime of approving poison for human consumption.   While the FDA refused to approve aspartame for 16 years because of the brain tumors, when the public started having them they changed their tune.  Dr. Friedman himself got on 60 Minutes to protect the manufacturer.  I call that nauseating!!  And  Dr. Ogden, I'm the one who talks to the aspartame brain tumor victims and I hear their cries when they tell me how bad they want to live.  And when they die leaving spouses and children I weep!!!  On the other hand, the FDA sends out propaganda packets!  Take an institution that most people consider rock solid, the Communicable Disease Center, also part of the Department of Health and Human  Services like the FDA and the NIH.  They did an investigation, one of the most damning ever done.  It showed what we see constantly, the memory loss, cardiac arrest, seizures, liver problems, DEATH, etc.  Yet, the CDC allowed a Dr. Trowbridge to put a summary on the investigation that conflicted with the report.  And I told the CDC (Dr. Satcher) if they didn't remove it and put a summary that was factual to the report I would put the entire investigation on web.  He didn't and I did. You can read it on DORway along with the FDA's own audit, the Bressler Report.  Its enough to even give Monsanto indigestion.  So the FDA can  never defend themselves or say they didn't know.  You will even read on DORway the protest of the National Soft Drink Association.  They knew it would break down to poison.  I wonder why they protested and then turned around and lobbied for NutraSweet?  You know I don't have to answer these questions because they are obvious to anyone. Disability and death are not acceptable costs of business.  The aspartame fiasco, in my opinion, is the greatest scandal in U.S. History - the mass poisoning of the American public and 100 countries of the world.  And now Monsanto wants the FDA to approve Neotame, a more potent aspartame.  AND THE VERY SAME DEADLY BREAKDOWN PRODUCTS including Diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent.  Long-term independent safety studies on both males and females haven't been conducted.  Numerous sections of the safety and environmental information are marked "confidential", unavailable to the general public, including facts necessary to determine the environmental impact of a neotame factory and information about breakdown to potential carcinogens.  Isn't it reasonable to consider that if this product did not breakdown to a tumor agent they would want the public to know instead of making it confidential?  Neotame, like aspartame, may cause slow poisoning, leading to debilitating symptoms of seizures, vision loss, panic attacks, brain tumors, abdominal pain, and DEATH.   But the FDA and Monsanto are good buddies and if the public doesn't stop them they will approve this too.  The late FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, tried desperately to stop the approval of this deadly poison.  He told Congress that aspartame violated the Delaney Amendment because of the brain tumors.  His last words will never be forgotten:  "And if the FDA violates its own laws who is left to protect the public?"  Dr. Verrett, another FDA toxicologist, said the studies were built on a foundation of sand and should be thrown out.  That leaves 83 independent studies on aspartame and they all showed problems.  Yes, those there to solve the problem ARE THE PROBLEM, and there is something more powerful than the billions of Monsanto or even American Home Products (merger) and thats consumer power in action.  We started out with a network of 900,000 people distributing warning flyers in l993.  Today Mission Possible operations are all over the world.  And people know why they are so sick and why so many have died.  The game is over.  As one attorney said: "Tobacco will pale against aspartame!"  The crime of the FDA and Monsanto/Searle is GENOCIDE.   As soon as Dr. Roberts medical text on the plague is published press releases will go out to 100 countries of the world.  We have already started asking all manufacturers to voluntarily remove aspartame and some have started doing it.  Dr. Trowbridge of the CDC is retired, their excuse for not changing the summary.  We hope you have no Doctor Trowbridges at the National Institutes of Health, and that you will take another look at the aspartame issue and, indeed, do more testing but without anybody's collaboration that will again tend to try to cover up this crime against humanity. Informants have already advised that even the National Soft Drink Association did a ten year study, also unpublished, that showed Alzheimers, birth defects and blindness.  Dr. Roberts has already written the book Defense Against Alzheimers Disease explaining that aspartame is escalating this 20th century disease that has now tripled.  Russell Blaylock, M.D., neurosurgeon, has written Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills and explains how aspartame destroys the central nervous system.  It mimics MS.  Dr. Ogden, you cannot feed a neurotoxin  to the general public without having neurological effects which is what CDC found. And any honest testing done correctly is going to show it as 83 independent researchers found. Betty Martini, Mission Possible International 770 242-2599 CC: Justice Department, doctors, scientists and Internet lists (permission to publish)