LETTER TO SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN

By Dr. Betty Martini
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
Telephone: 770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com
Web Site: http://www.dorway.com



20 July 2004


The following letter was e-mailed on 20 July 2004 to Senator Richard Durbin at dick@durbin.senate.gov


Dear Senator Durbin:

Several horrified people sent me your Dietary Supplement Safety Act (S. 722). I'm particularly glad you're for campaign finance reform and know "soft money" from the pharmaceutical companies are bribes. The facts have been kept from you, and it is vital you see the whole picture. Some 200 years ago the problem was discussed by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He said:

"Unless we put Medical Freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic... The constitution of the Republic should make special provisions for Medical Freedom as well as Religious Freedom."

EPHEDRA : You say "Ephedra's dangers have been well documented. Its use has been implicated in more than 100 deaths and thousands of other serious health incidents. ......Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler died in 2003 after taking a supplement containing ephedra, but famous athletes are not the only victims. For example, in Illinois, 16 year old football player Sean Riggins died in 2002 after taking an ephedra supplement. " Senator you have been denied the facts and I'm pasting in my article The Ephedra Story. Bechler didn't die of ephedra. Dr. H. J. Roberts who declared Aspartame Disease a global plague and wrote the medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, http://www.sunsentpress.com or 1-800-827-7991 called the medical examiner and asked how many diet drinks he was using. Aspartame triggers an irregular heart rhythm and interacts with all cardiac medication. It damages the cardiac conduction system and causes sudden death. Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., in his books Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills and Health & Nutrition Secrets To Save Your Life (http://www.russellblaylockmd.com) tells aspartame victims to always take magnesium because it protects the brain and the heart from excitotoxins. (aspartic acid in aspartame is an excitotoxin, product that literally stimulates the neurons of the brain to death causing brain damage). When athletes run they deplete magnesium, and if they are using aspartame products (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful,E951/Canderel, etc.) it can cause sudden death. It is documented by these world experts in the books mentioned and in their papers on http://www.wnho.net (click on aspartame) and http://www.dorway.com

After Bechler's death it was reported he was concerned about his weight and would go a couple of days without food, then drink diet soda all day. It is very obvious to the physicians who researched the issue Bechler died of Aspartame Disease, not ephedra which has used for thousands of years without problems. This was a cover-up by the FDA for so many people dropping dead from aspartame. I doubt anyone has died from ephedra unless it was from an over-the-counter product manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry. The reason I say this is one of the most renowned neuroscientists in the world, Dr. John Olney, is on the Ephedra Council and researched FDA's records. Some of the cases the FDA used as reactions are a joke.

You say a 16 year old football player died in Illinois. So did a 6 year old child playing in the gym some months ago in Illinois. Ephedra was banned and yet the athletes are still dropping dead. I get the cases constantly. Athletes using aspartame to keep fit are killing themselves because they think aspartame is a safe additive when in fact its a deadly neurotoxic drug. It makes you crave carbohydrates so you gain weight.

THE BIGGER PICTURE: RUMSFELD DISEASE

Senator, a new movie has been released Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. This is the story of aspartame. Dr. Roberts told me yesterday he sent it to you so please see that Congress sees it. The FDA would not allow it on the market for 16 years because of its deadly effects and because it breaks down to diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent that gave rats brain tumors. Searle would remove the brain tumors and put the rats back in the study and when they died would resurrect them on paper. See FDA audit on www.dorway.com, Bressler Report. I spoke with Jerome Bressler personally as did Doctors H. J. Roberts and Russell Blaylock. He said these studies were so bad when the FDA had it retyped they left out the 20% that was the worst. (FDA guilty of altering reports!). FDA did try to get Searle indicted for fraud under Title 18, Section 1001 but both U.S. Prosecutors hired on with the defense team and the statute of limitations expired. The reward for Prosecutor Sam Skinner was he was made Secretary of Transportation and he could squelch the cries of the pilots having grand mal seizures in the cockpits of commercial airliners. Aspartame is a seizure triggering drug and a humongous hazard to aviation. Then he became Chief of Staff under Bush's father.

Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle and because the FDA refused aspartame approval he said he would call in his markers and get it approved anyway as documented in the 8 month investigation by UPI and congressional record. Rumsfeld was on Reagan's transition team and the day after he took office he appointed Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner so aspartame could be approved. But President Reagan knew it might take awhile to get Hayes to the FDA and he had to make sure the current FDA Commissioner would not prevent approval. So, he wrote an executive order making the current FDA Commissioner powerless to do anything about it! What political cloud! The entire story is told by prominent consumer attorney, James Turner, in the movie. He also says Dr. John Olney insisted on Searle replicating studies in his lab which they did, but never gave to the FDA. The studies showed brain damage! It was Dr. Olney himself who did the original studies on aspartic acid (40% of aspartame and an excitotoxin) which showed lesions in the brains of mice. I have his report to the Board of Inquiry explaining what would happen to the brains of our kids if this toxin was approved. Unfortunately the prophecy has been fulfilled. Congress gave NIH 2.7 billion to find out what has poisoned US children. Rumsfeld Disease has poisoned the world. 70% of the population is using it and 40% of our children.

Arthur Hull Hayes did over-rule the FDA Board of Inquiry who said aspartame had not been proven safe, and caused brain tumors, and revoked the petition for approval. After he successfully committed the deadly deed he went to work for the PR Agency of the manufacturer at $1000.00 a day and has refused to talk to the press ever since. The Trocho Study in l998 shows the formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol in aspartame accumulates in the cells and damages DNA. When you damage DNA you are talking about survival of the human race.

WHY YOUR BILL COULD NEVER WORK: With aspartame on the market causing by the FDA's own documented list of 92 symptoms who would know where the reactions came from. The FDA would blame any reaction on herbs even though the consumer could be consuming this toxin. Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., says in a lecture on web the reactions to aspartame are not allergic but toxic like arsenic and cyanide. Aspartame is not only a neurotoxic drug that interacts with just about every drug used to treat the problems it causes but is a chemical hypersensitization agent. We have four support groups and victims even suffer reactions from genetically engineered foods. Aspartame causes polychemical sensitivity syndrome, the same as multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome. So it interacts with vaccines, other toxins and even other unsafe sweeteners like sucralose or Splenda (has a chlorinated base and can cause autoimmune disease) and acesulfame potassium (causes cancer and leukemia in original studies). Often victims complain after using aspartame they have become allergic to so many things, but in reality they have been poisoned and this is a toxic reaction.

Can ephedra interact with aspartame? Yes. However, aspartame interacts with "all" cardiac medication, "all" antidepressants, insulin, hormones, Coumadin, anti-seizure medication and even L-dopa. Are you going to ask all cardiac medication, antidepressants, insulin, hormones, Coumadin, anti-seizure medication and L-dopa be removed from the market?? You see aspartame is a deadly chemical poison. Put a little arsenic in some healthy food and you're still going to be poisoned.

Children are getting autism from vaccines. Aspartame also causes autism and interacts with vaccines. So let's take all vaccines off the market and all drugs that can cause death because they have interacted with aspartame.

What I have just told you is completely documented in these medical books mentioned above as well as others. I'm simply the messenger, the founder of a global volunteer force warning the world off aspartame and getting the true facts from the world experts to the public. You see, Senator, in original studies aspartame triggered not only brain tumors but mammary, uterine, ovarian, testicular, thyroid and pancreatic tumors - for starters. In congressional hearings the late FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross said beyond a shadow of a doubt aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer. He said it violated the Delaney Amendment which forbid putting anything in food you know will cause cancer. In his words to Congress were "And if the FDA violates its own law who is left to protect the public?" We have no protector and so consumers must alert the public. While the FDA were heroes when they fought not to approve aspartame, they now have become the handmaiden of the pharmaceutical industry, its attack dog. Rather than obey the law they have repealed the law. They got rid of the Delaney Amendment because they violated it. It would be interesting to know who was the responsible party.

So let's say someone was using a dietary supplement and had one of these so-called serious adverse health events you mention such as heart attack, stroke or seizure. How would you know the dietary supplement caused it? They may have taken it with a Diet Coke or coffee with Equal, or aspartame in one of the other estimated 9000 products that contain this poison. Look at the FDA report attached of 92 documented symptoms triggered by aspartame. Notice aspartame triggers all these serious health events as you call them, including death. And the FDA does nothing about it.

You're probably thinking, we'll let just take aspartame off the market. Do you know how many have tried? There have been three congressional hearings and many have submitted citizens petitions for ban of aspartame. In l986 so many people were going blind from the wood alcohol in aspartame and having grand mal seizures the Community Nutrition Institute petitioned the FDA for ban. The FDA now having proof to recall it refused. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court. Today Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court, and he was a Monsanto attorney. They bought Searle in l985 and then sold it, still running from the liability. But you remember the words of Mohammed Ali "You can run but you can't hide!"

You really expect the FDA to protect the public? The FDA themselves serve above the law and refuse to protect the public. I filed a Citizens Petition for ban of aspartame two years ago last June based on the fact I have the FDA records showing it to be a chemical poison and they lie to the public. THE LAW REQUIRES FDA to answer in 180 days. They refuse. They are now in violation of the same crime they tried to have Searle indicted under, Title 18, Section 1001. They are stumbling the public and lying to them with full knowledge aspartame is deadly. After all, they are the ones who documented aspartame's dangers to begin with!

DOUBLE STANDARD: You say, "So the idea that a product could be pulled from the market simply because of a single report of a bad experience is totally inaccurate."

Senator, you say Ephedra is not safe. Well, if it's not safe than why are the pharmaceutical companies allowed to continue to use it in over the counter drugs? The real reason is the pharmaceutical company's greed. They continually try to snatch supplements and have for years.

Do you remember when someone put cyanide in I believe Tylenol years ago? Because of the incident of poisoning a product manufacturers then went to plastic coverings of pills. Notice they didn't take Tylenol off the market because as far as they knew nothing was wrong with Tylenol, it was an incident where the product had been poisoned. Now, lets take the same incident with something sold in health food stores. Years ago some people died when they used Tryptophan from eosinophilia myalgia. It was later found the product had been genetically engineered and this "bad batch or impurity" caused the problem. In fact, had the health food store known it was genetically engineered they never would have sold it in the first place! Yet the FDA swooped down and immediately removed Tryptophan from the market because genetic engineering had poisoned the product like cyanide had poisoned Tylenol.

And yes I consider genetic engineering poisoning. Even the Father of modern molecular biology, Erwin Chargaff said: "The technology of genetic engineering poses a greater threat to the world than the advent of nuclear technology. Genetic engineering and biotechnology are a molecular Auschwitz." The public didn't ask for it and have pleaded for labeling to avoid it. I gave up broccoli when it was genetically engineered with rat genes. How many consumers do you think appreciate that being pushed upon them. Bon Appetit! And don't even get me started on RBGH, genetically engineered bovine growth hormone that poisons children's milk and increases the insulin growth factor, the regulator of cancer.

Tryptophan should be on the market today because its vital in the production of serotonin, and aspartame depletes serotonin. Aspartame victims need it desperately. Yet, it wasn't fit to be bought in health food stores for $5.99. But its perfectly safe to get it from the pharmaceutical industry at $90.00 a bottle. And that was years ago. I shudder to think what it costs today. And that's the name of the game - Greed! So many can't afford it and go without. More of this could happen with your bill. FDA will use any excuse to remove a supplement. If you don't remember the raids in the early l990's by the FDA I do have the records. I remember when they raided International Nutrition and said orotates were drugs because they couldn't find the name in a medical dictionary. It was so absurd I wrote a poem on it:

Oh Orotate, Oh Orotate,
From only milk you came,
The FDA, the FDA
Couldn't find your name.

A vitamin you proved to be
The height of criminality

And so we die
The reason why,
They couldn't spell your name

Cocaine and heroin they don't mind
It's natural foods they raid to find
So orotate your future's busted
Because the FDA we trusted

Regular vitamins they were raiding and surely you haven't forgotten how they raided the office of Dr. Wright in Washington. "Let Truth Be Your Bias" narrated by James Earl Jones, a documentary, showed people marching in the streets with signs such as "Dr. Wright made me well, FDA go to hell". And you want to give the FDA more power!!!!? They had guns. Do you know they are so bad there is a FDA Holocaust Museum in Hollywood, Florida? I've been there and they list the atrocities of the FDA.

GAME PLAN OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY: First of all pharmaceuticals are priced outrageously. Why is the pharmaceutical industry so greedy? They pay off congress, they pay professional organizations to push their propaganda and protect them, they give money to universities so they will not expose them, and on and on. They advertise all over TV to get people to believe in their products. Peter Jennings did an outstanding expose on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. As an example, Dr. Richard Wurtman of MIT spoke out against aspartame in congress and wanted to do studies on aspartame and seizures. He was threatened by the Vice President of Searle his research funds would be denied if he did. They were. So where do they get their research funds. Usually from ILSE, Life Sciences. And who provides those funds? Monsanto, Searle, Coke and others who want researchers to say aspartame is safe. As Cynthia Crossen said in "The Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact", 'The road to hell was paved with research funds.' MIT now gets funds but Dr. Wurtman no longer speaks out against aspartame. Fortunately he left a paper trail he can't make disappear.

As pharmaceuticals skyrocketed, the elderly and the poor tried to buy them Canada. Understand the pharmaceutical companies send sealed bottles to Canada that are sold back at a cheaper price to Americans. But the pharmaceutical Gestapo, the FDA, had to put a stop to that, so they said they couldn't confirm that would be safe, and did everything to stop the needy from buying them cheaper. American pharmaceuticals threatened to stop selling Canada if they sold to Americans.

So the poor and elderly do their best and instead take safe vitamins and herbs like families have done for generations. So now the drug pushers want to remove safe vitamins and drugs from the marketplace so they can do the same thing they did with Tryptophan sell it themselves to the public for exorbitant prices.

HOW FAR WILL THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY GO? When I was a young girl I worked for a large group of Internists. At the time cholesterol was normal up to 240. Some years later I was startled when someone mentioned normal was up to 150. It didn't make sense to me. Serendipitous to this I accidentally came across an article in JAMA discussing the issue, and that in reality 240 was normal but how did they tell the public they had been wrong. Now they are talking about keeping cholesterol in the 70 range for high-risk patients.

From an article by the Associated Press dated July 18 titled Cholesterol Experts Challenged: "Most of the heart disease experts who urged more people to take cholesterol-lowering drugs last week have made money from the companies selling those medicines, critics say. Consumer groups are blasting the new cholesterol guidelines as being tainted by the influence of major pharmaceutical firms that make blockbusters such as Lipitor and Pravachol. Last year drug makers earned $26 billion worldwide on cholesterol lowering medicines, the top selling class of drugs."

"The new guidelines, issue Monday by the American Heart Association and the federal government, were written by nine of the country's top cholesterol experts. All but one have received consulting or speaking fees, research money or other support from makers of the most widely used anti-cholesterol drugs."

Senator, these statin drugs are very dangerous. On March 3, 2001 ABC News reported a San Antonio, Texas article titled How Low Can You Go that said: "Doctors have learned that in men over 70, a cholesterol level below 160 can be as dangerous as a level over 240. Some people who have low cholesterol and stay low are at high risk of dying, said Dr. David Curb of the University of Hawaii, who c-authored a study on the subject, released today on the last day of the American Heart Association convention in San Antonio. .... The study suggests that the best cholesterol range for older men is between 200 and 219."

From the article The Cholesterol Myth, Part 4: "Since 1992, several observers have noted increases in suicides among those undertaking cholesterol-lowering dietary regimes. Decreases in blood cholesterol cause decreases in serotonin receptors leading to increased microviscosity and affecting the balance of cerebral lipid metabolism which could have profound effects on brain function."

Aspartame also depletes serotonin and I felt it would most likely interact with these cholesterol lowering drugs. In fact, I called Dr. Roberts and he agreed most likely they would. Here is what Dr. Roberts says about statin drugs in Useful Insights For Diagnosis, Treatment and Public Health, http://www.sunsentpress.com

"This controversial publication has more than historic significance. It warns about (a) the current epidemic of cholesterolophobia, (b) the widespread use of cholesterol-lowering drugs and (c) their reflexive prescription by physicians. Indeed, many doctors now do so because patients request them on the basis of commercial hype or the medicolegal implications. Stated differently, they fear being sued if someone with a slightly elevated cholesterol concentration were to suffer a heart attack without the alleged prophylactic benefit of such drugs.

"The magnitude of consumption of cholesterol-lowering drugs is illustrated by the surge in sales of Lipitor to $6.45 billion for the year 2001. Using the recommendations from the third report of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP III), an estimated 36 million persons would qualify for lipid lowering medication.

Some insightful cartoonists have had a field day with cholesterolophobia. One featured the warning to a friend that he avoid contact with his father because "his cholesterol was 280."

"The serious side effects of "statins" can be readily found in the Physicians' Desk Reference and the fine print of ads that appear daily in newspapers. Such "therapy" could be harmful when other likely causes of elevated cholesterol (e.g., hypothyroidism; testing errors) are ignored. I again re-emphasize the dictum: cholesterol should be understood before being lowered.

"Dr. John B. Thomison, Editor of the Southern Medical Journal, editorialized:

*Under no circumstances should you ever trust the manufacturer to protect either you or the patient, even though in most instances they do this adequately. Their motivations have to be different from yours, all the disclaimers in the world to the contrary notwithstanding. They are, after all, in the business of selling; what's more their stockholders require that they give it their best shot... Because doctors, it is you who will be held accountable, and if anyone gets sued, you will be that one.

*The dubious statistical significance of purported benefits attributed to cholesterol-lowering agents is exploited in marketing blitzes. discussing the selective citation of evidence, Jefferson (2) warned, "Misinformation in health care...may cost lives."

*Vigorous attempts to reduce cholesterol concentrations in older individuals deserve skepticism. Schatz et al (3) studied this issue in older persons within the Honolulu Heart Program. They concluded: "These data cast doubt on the scientific justification for lowering cholesterol to very low concentrations... in elderly people."

*Dr. Donald Fedder (4) lead author of the NCEP III report, cautioned: "With this huge increase in the younger population eligible for these drugs, we need rigorous surveillance for unwanted and unexpected events."

"There are expanding "indications" for statin therapy. One of the paradoxes posed by the suggested use of statins for Alzheimer's disease is the frequency of memory problems and personality changes in patients taking them for other disorders. These complications can be understood in light of the fact that cholesterol is the most common organic molecule within the brain, and the secretion of cholesterol by glial cells is crucial to the process of synaptogesis - and therefore learning and memory (Science 2001;294:1354-57).

"These issues underscore the legitimacy for outrage when pharmaceutical companies have interlocking interests with university-based researchers and the NIH. Indeed, it is now a virtual Herculean task to challenge the lipid hypothesis of atherosclerosis/coronary heart disease, and the conclusion that lowering one's cholesterol favors life extension. The challenger has to contend with impressive data and figures derived from the Framingham studies that rendered these attitudes a sacred cow in contemporary medical teaching and practice...coupled with the fact that they generate enormous profits for several industries. A few credentialed brave souls have independently elected to share my anguish - as Dr. Uffe Rasvnakov, author of The Cholesterol Myths (New Trends Publishing).

"I am still not convinced that lowering cholesterol below the NIH guidelines offers real benefit. Moreover, I have difficulty evaluating the efficacy of cholesterol-lowering drugs, especially the alleged benefits of one agent over another relative to greater LDL reduction.

"Doctors face such turmoil in no small measure because of corporate sponsored research, and the refusal by "prestigious" medical journals to publish contrary opinions by practicing physicians. They ought to adopt "the principle of precautionary action" before prescribing drugs that alter cholesterol metabolism and other fundamental biochemical systems. In other words, physicians should distrust the permissive "prove harm" philosophy ("line up the bodies") used by regulators. Some researchers who signed lengthy confidential clauses for the funding of drug studies later anguished when prevented from "blowing the whistle" on misleading or potentially harmful final reports.

"The following commentaries reinforce the profound ethical implications over remaining silent about adverse side effects of drugs at the risk of losing lucrative research contracts.

*In an editorial titled, "Is Academic Medicine For Sale?", Dr. Marcia Angell (5), Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, expressed outrage over the ubiquitous financial arrangements therein. She regarded the weaving of marketplace incentives into the fabric of academic medicine as a Faustian bargain: "... there is now considerable evidence that researchers with ties to drug companies are indeed more likely to report results that are favorable to the products of those companies than researchers without such ties."

*As members of "the road show," Wilmhurst (6) noted that several eminent British cardiologists profited handsomely from promoting the drugs of a pharmaceutical company in lectures to UK doctors."

Dr. Roberts goes on for a couple of pages with references but the information is getting lengthy. He does make the point the cost for these purported cholesterol-lowering panaceas is outrageous. The annual $80 billion now spent for prescriptions (an increase of nearly 14 percent a year since l995) is four times the rate of growth for hospital expenditures (3 - 4 percent annually)! It's outstanding information and he ends by discussing the complications which he says indicate the potential high price for arbitrarily interfering with the metabolism of cholesterol, a major building block of cell membranes and hormones.

Perhaps you can understand why the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want someone who may indeed have a cholesterol level that is too high, to run down to the health food store and take something natural and safe. They want to gouge the public and make sure all the profit goes to them. They could care less that people with a 70 cholesterol could simply have a stroke and drop dead.

Baycol, a fluoride cholesterol-lowering drug (statin) was voluntarily pulled off the market because of numerous deaths associated with its use. And who is to say the others are safe? FDA ought to stand for Fanny Does Anything. Asking them if something is safe is like asking the Mafia for the crime rate. Rezulin, Redux/fen-phen, Propulsid, Lotronex, Duract, Posicor and Raxar are just a few of the drugs pulled for safety reasons after the FDA judged them to be safe. On May 17, 2001, Richard Horton of the prestigious Lancet wrote about the FDA and said: "It is an impossible conflict for safety issues to be overseen by a center that receives funding from industry to review and approve new drugs."

Whenever something natural and safe threatens expensive pharmaceuticals the FDA is going to side with industry. Take something as healthful and wonderful as primrose oil which threatened aspirin and heart drugs. From the book Racketeering in Medicine, page 119:

"Dr. Robert Olson was the government's expert witness in the case of U.S. v Efamol, Ltd, in which evening primrose il had been seizured by the FDA, as a vegetable oil classified "generally not regarded as safe." It is known that Dr. Olson and Dr. Victor Herbert have both served as food and pharmaceutical spokespersons and as self-appointed "nutrition quackbusters." They obviously collaborated on the Efamol case.

"I submitted a paper on gamma linolenic acid which was published in the June l988 issue of Food Technology. In the opinion of the FDA's senior nutrition expert, Dr. Altschul, the paper was technically correct in all respects. Dr. Herbert, however, wrote to the editor asserting that the paper gave too much credibility to the clinical uses of evening primrose oil. He called the article a "deceptive and misleading promotional piece for evening primrose oil," a natural product which he and Dr. Olson, along with the FDA, had fought to keep out of the country. Why? Because it was a "dangerous substance."

"The real reason they wanted to ban this natural oil was that the active ingredient, gamma linolenic acid, in conjunction with the active ingredients in fish oil, EPA and DHA, has the potential to significantly cut into the market share of aspirin and other non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory agents as well as cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Questran and Lovastatin."

And you want to trust our vitamins and herbs to the FDA? And the FDA allows industry to get away with anything. Here's another example. Aspartame has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG which is another excitotoxin. http://www.truthinlabeling.org MSG got a bad name so industry just used a list of other names hoping the public wouldn't find out. Jack Samuels who can go into anaphylactic shock if he gets this toxin filed suit against the FDA on the labeling issue. While he was at the FDA he found out the glutamate industry had been engaged in "scientific fraud" as regards the safety of their product. From the book Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills, page 200: (Russell Blaylock, MD) "It appears that one of the prime organizations supporting the use of MSG, the International Glutamate Technical Committee, has known all along that placebos used in testing the safety of MSG contained a powerful excitotoxin themselves."

"The Samuels sent me a copy of correspondence sent to Sue Ann Anderson, R.D., Ph.D., a senior staff scientist at the Life Sciences Research Office in Bethesda, Maryland, from the Chairman of the International Glutamate Technical Committee, Dr. Andrew G. Ebert, in which Dr. Ebert states that aspartame (NutraSweet) has been used as a masking sweetener in both the MSG samples and the placebos in tests conducted on the safety of MSG.

"A placebo is used in such a test as a control so that the test subject cannot tell which sample they are taking: the active drug or the control substance. To prevent them from tasting the MSG researchers had been using sucrose in both samples. But since l978 the sweetener was changed to aspartame. This was done because sucrose was thought to alter the absorption of the MSG.

"Placebos are supposed to be completely inert substances. Otherwise they would produce a physiological effect all of their own and ruin the experiment. In the case of MSG toxicology studies, the placebo used to test the excitotoxin glutamate is NutraSweet, which contains the excitotoxin aspartate. It has been clearly shown in a multitude of studies that aspartate produces the identical destructive reactions on the nervous system as MSG. It would seem obvious even to the layman that you would not use a control substance to compare to a known toxin if the control contained the same class of chemical toxin. But that is exactly what is being done.

"Are the representatives of the glutamate industry aware of this basic scientific fact? It is hard to believe otherwise, especially in the face of the fact that one of their own representative presented evidence before a public hearing at a meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology which tables were presented showing that aspartame produces the same types and incidences of reactions as MSG.

"Did these scientists disclose in their scientific papers the fact that the placebos also contained a known excitotoxin? The answer is an emphatic "no" and I have reviewed dozens of these studies. In fact, I was not aware of this deception until I received the proof from Dr. Samuels. In many cases the powder used to mix the placebos was supplied by the International Glutamate Technical Committee (IGTC). It is interesting to note that the Ajinomoto company, the chief manufacturer of MSG and the raw materials of aspartame, is an active member of the IGTC."

Senator Durbin note the date l978. This means the glutamate people know aspartame would react and was an excitotoxin long before it was approved. They knew they couldn't show that MSG doesn't react so the idea was to say that it doesn't react anymore than the placebo. They have been using aspartame for a quarter of a century as a placebo when the law states a placebo must be inert or non-reactive.

So here the FDA has known the glutamate people have been committing a crime for over 25 years and have allowed them to do so. Did they slap their hands when they were found out? No, the FDA admitted they were not suppose to do that (bad boys at play) but turned a blind eye and allowed the scientific fraud to stand. So again, I ask you, do you really think you could trust the Food and Death Association with our vitamins and herbs?

HERBS: You say, "For supplements that are not stimulants, such as calcium supplements and many herbal remedies, advance review by the FDA would not be required." Are you not aware the FDA would love nothing better than to prevent anyone from using an herb and even harass farmers who grow them. Because chemotherapy killed my mother when she had cancer I decided to use an herbal formula when I had the problem. One of the ingredients is black snake root. It seems the FDA has found out about the ingredients and started to ban them. First I heard they put black snake root on the endangered list. I thought that was particularly odd. Inasmuch as snake root is not useful unless it grows on a mountain because of the strength, I wondered how they knew it was endangered. Perhaps the FDA has a fleet of helicopters that go from mountain to mountain. Then I was told it had given liver problems to three people. In order to do that they would have to use a lot of black snake root. And how could they do that since it taste like 3 week old dead rats mixed in manure. That would be quite a show seeing someone use enough snake root to make their liver toxic. On the other hand, if the person was using aspartame, the Trocho Study has shown that most toxicity is in the liver. It is the cause of a lot of steato hepatitis according to Dr. James Bowen.

The man who grows the herbs even has been visited by the DEA. But the last thing that happened is that the US Forestry came out and sprayed and killed his herbs. He ran into one of the men who actually did the spraying who told him "we were told herbs are illegal". Now, Senator, who do you think had the US Forestry kill his herbs and his livelihood. He had been growing herbs just like his father all his life. He was told he might as well not fight it because he couldn't win. Who do you suppose had the US Forestry kill his herbs?

UNSAFE FOOD AND DRUGS, COMPLIMENTS OF THE FDA: The FDA could care less about consumer safety. They allow aspartame when it liberates free methyl alcohol, and methanol is classified as a narcotic. The chronic methanol poisoning affects the dopamine system of the brain and causes addiction. So the FDA with full knowledge allows our kids to be addicted and their brains to be destroyed by a product that is known to trigger ADD, ADHD and reduce IQ. The FDA approves such things as Tamoxifen to stop the spread of cancer when the World Health Organization in l996 declared it a carcinogen. When I told Dr. Trudy Bush, the researcher, that it appeared that Tamoxifen was an pro-estrogen instead of an anti-estrogen she said: "You're right. I tried to tell the manufacturer but they said they were going to market it anyway." And, of course, with all the bad history on Tamoxifen Fanny approved it anyway. To stop the spread of cancer with a carcinogen is like playing Russian Roulette with an automatic weapon. And the list goes on and on. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

MENTAL DISEASE: The news today is that President Bush wants the whole country to be screened for mental disease. Could it be because 70% of the population and 40% of the children are using aspartame. The phenylalanine in aspartame lowers the seizure threshold and depletes serotonin. Lowered serotonin triggers bipolar or manic depression, paranoia, hallucinations, mood swings, panic attacks, etc. Rumsfeld Disease knows no age. Bipolar is an adult illness and yet the front cover of Time Magazine told of young children now with bipolar and it being epidemic. Diabetes is epidemic and aspartame can precipitate diabetes, simulates and aggravates diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, and interacts with insulin. Obesity has now been declared a medical disease. If you want to get fat aspartame is where it's at.

I've heard Doctors Roberts and Blaylock say that many people today in mental hospitals are aspartame victims. And aspartame interacts with all antidepressants. Parents Magazine in l999, Sept, had an article "What's Happening To Our children" stating that all families are affected. The ADD people decided to remove pop machines and vending machines out of the worst school in Wisconsin having the most learning problems and behavioral problems. They gave the kids real food. When the program was over it was the best school without learning or behavioral problems. It became known as Miracle in Wisconsin.

But the House Appropriations Committee has now agreed to fund President Bush's new freedom commission initiative that includes the plan to screen all U.S. Citizens for Mental Illness. Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee approved $20 million in new federal dollars to begin implementation of the plans set forth by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFC) to get every man, woman and child in America "screened" for "mental illness". Amidst broad public concern that many of the antidepressants being prescribed to Americans are under federal investigation for causing suicidal reactions, the New Freedom on Mental Health Commission's campaign for national mental health "screening" will result in millions more Americans being diagnosed with fraudulent and unscientific mental disorders and prescribed dangerous and deadly psychiatric drugs.

Remember that due to psychiatric influence, parents have been reported to Child Protective Services and charged with medical neglect for refusing to give their child a psychiatric drug such as those currently under investigation for causing suicidal reactions. Parents have been charged with "medical neglect" for refusing psychiatric treatment - despite the fact that there is no scientific proof that there is anything medically wrong with the child.

CODEX: A horror story. They got away with it in Europe. The pharmaceutical got control of vitamins and herbs. So nice those from England are getting their supplements from industry, and what they are also getting is very very sick. Constant calls from consumers in the UK tell me they are having all sorts of reactions, one lady even going blind, only to find out that industry is putting aspartame in their vitamins. And they have no where to turn. Is this what you want, Senator, for the United States? Your bill is the beginning of the end, more control for the FDA. What makes you think they are the least bit interested in consumer safety since they have done nothing about aspartame for two decades and people have screamed at them because of the disability and misery they have suffered. I know because I have received copies of many of those letters and reports. If they won't remove a deadly chemical poison from the marketplace that has been demonstrated to trigger disease and death in consumers how could they be concerned about anything, but their continued loyalty to industry. They go to the FDA to become bureaucrats so they can end up being plutocrats. What is happening in Europe must be overturned or those people in Europe will suffer nothing but disease and death.

CONCLUSION: Senator Durbin, I've been taking the case histories on aspartame for over a decade. I weep with the sick and I can't get it out of my mind when dying victims cry out like Kelli Motluck who said: "I want to live, I want to live, I want to live, but if I die you must promise me that you will tell the world that Monsanto murdered me. Kelli Motluck was a successful 28 year old attorney with a young daughter. She used lots of aspartame and developed an aspartame brain tumor. She left behind a grieving husband and little girl who will grow up without a mother. She is just one of thousands.

Every few years when the controversy gets so loud the regulatory agencies can't squelch the cries they say they have re-evaluated aspartame and assure the public its safe, even though they have full knowledge that its not. They just go through the motions. A couple of years ago the EU did this. First I went to England to lecture and the manufactures knew I was coming. I was locked up by Immigration for 3 1/2 hours with such questions as "If we allow you in England how many people will find out about the dangers of aspartame? How many people were at the lectures last time you were here?" They confiscated all my aspartame literature and books. In the end they gave it all back because they knew if they sent me back to America I would be front-page news in England and they couldn't have that. This is the power of the industry.

I then flew to Brussels to see the EU. I gave them the government documents showing aspartame was never proven safe and told them about the business deal Searle made with a Professor Paul Turner in England's regulatory agency to approve aspartame without anyone knowing. Obviously if they had found out the FDA wanted them indicted for fraud they would never have gotten it approved. Parliament found out and had a big blow out but they didn't rescind the order. The story was in the Guardian. I gave them industry's flawed studies so they wouldn't use them as legitimate, like the Rowan Study where Monsanto forgot to tell anyone they gave 16 of the 18 subjects anti-seizure medication for a one day study of aspartame and seizures, sort of tantamount to smelling the bottle.

I asked the EU why they outlawed Stevia, a safe herb, the salvation of the diabetics. I was told there were no studies on safety. I said: "We have about 500, where do you want them sent?" They didn't answer because they didn't want them. The manufacturer wants no competition for their addictive toxin, even though it's killing the diabetics.

I gave the EU all sorts of damaging evidence on aspartame but they had no intention of telling the world the truth. On their committee were representatives of industry. They disregarded the damning evidence and used the flawed industry studies. They saw the huge 1038 page medical text on the global plague of aspartame disease and were not even concerned. They didn't even review their own research. It was as if they were making it up as they went along. The rebuttal to their lies is on http://www.wnho.net by Mark Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Center, http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

Years ago Dr. James Bowen told the FDA aspartame was mass poisoning of the American public and more than 70 countries of the world. The letter on labeling is on http://www.dorway.com The FDA sent out an agent and was very upset that Dr. Bowen wrote the letter and even more upset that he wanted to give them 29 more cases of Rumsfeld Disease. We are now facing what may be one of the largest plagues in world history, thanks to the politics of the pharmaceutical industry who would like to run the world.

We are plagued with email posts by the hundreds because the pharmaceutical industry wants to sell drugs, and care not if the drugs are prescribed by your physician. They say they have doctors who will give you what you want why bother with a doctor. Aspartame damages the hypothalamus of the brain and the mitochondria of the cell and triggers male sexual dysfunction. So day in and day out we are spammed with advertisements for Viagara with deceptive subjects to get you to open their post like "you left your jacket at my house". You can't turn on TV without listening to pharmaceutical companies trying to get you to buy drugs. They have dumbed down the public and caused misery and suffering the world over.

The FDA and industry should be put on an island and made to eat nothing but food containing aspartame and see how they like this Sweet Misery. Drug companies should be closed and the government should take over the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals at reasonable prices, preventing the constant bribes and threats with "soft money". The FDA should be replaced by an agency consumer related interested in safe food and drugs and not loyalty to the manufacturers. It won't happen because the drug pushers have bottomless checkbooks and there are too many with their hands out willing to be prostitutes. Professional organizations are funded by industry, so those responsible to solve the problem ARE the problem.

The situation has gotten so bad that Dr. Russell Blaylock, neurosurgeon has just released a report showing a good deal of the population who have used aspartame for years already have subclinical MS, and if not warned will have full blown disease.

Don't play into the hands of the pharmaceutical industry, Senator. They'll be no supplements left to help those poisoned by the many drugs being approved by the FDA. I pray to the Almighty Sovereign of the University that you will see the light and withdraw your bill. If you want to sponsor a bill call it the Benjamin Rush Bill giving back medical freedom to this country. The prisons are full of good nutritionists who tried to help people only to be jailed, the Bastille of medical science as Dr. Rush so prophesied. Today a Sunday School Teacher, Diane Fleming, remains in prison because her athletic husband killed himself with aspartame. The police saw the methanol poisoning on autopsy. Aspartame liberates free methyl alcohol. It is a crime to approve such but the FDA refuses to answers questions about it. They continue to lie and deny, and the cemeteries are full of their victims by the millions. They don't even have the integrity to put a warning for pregnant women so that millions of babies are murdered in their mothers womb. FDA = Fanny Does Anything - but protect consumers from unsafe food and drugs.

Sincerely,

Dr. Betty Martini
Founder, Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
http://www.dorway.com
http://www.whno.net


The Ephedra Story & Aspartame

By Dr. Betty Martini

Our FDA opened the 2004 New Year by banning a beneficial and harmless herbal supplement. If I had to explain the Ephedra case in a paragraph, in a nutshell it has nothing to do with safety since its been around for about 4000 years with no problems, and everything to do with the FDA snatching another supplement for the pharmaceutical industry.

You can still walk into any store and buy cigarettes. According to the CDC approximately 442,398 deaths per year are attributed to cigarette smoking. And the FDA insisted tobacco should come under their jurisdiction because it's addictive and a drug. Dr. David Kessler was the one responsible for this. Was it to protect the tobacco industry since its still on the market, even after class action? A couple of years ago I saw a report on the Internet that actually said since the FDA didn't ban tobacco it has to now be considered safe! It took the lives of both of my parents.

According to Dave Fairbank in a January 6, 2004 article in the Daily Press, ephedra has been linked to more than 100 deaths. A comprehensive, FDA-commissioned review by the RAND Corporation that considered every adverse reaction recorded in the agency's files and the medical literature through 2002 identified only 20 cases of serious symptoms among ephedra uses where there was an attempt to rule out alternative explanations.

However, I would be willing to bet even in the 20 cases where there was an attempt to rule out other sources no one asked these users if they were also using aspartame. It has been said ephedra could be linked to strokes or seizures or cardiovascular problems. Aspartame is a seizure triggering drug and 4 different types of seizures are listed on the FDA's report of 92 documented symptoms triggered by this toxin including death. (http://www.dorway.com). It triggers strokes, and big time damages the cardiac conduction system and causes sudden death. It triggers an irregular heart rhythm and interacts with all cardiac medication. (Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, http://www.sunsentpress.com or 1-800-827-7991 H. J. Roberts, M.D.)

Most people who are trying to lose weight and use Ephedra are the same people who are using aspartame (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful, E951, Canderel, etc.). And unless you asked the person using ephedra if he also uses aspartame, now being used by 2/3rds of the population, and 40% of our kids, there would be no way of knowing. And it can also be hidden in natural and artificial flavors.

Tim Sullivan said in the San Diego Union Tribune in Feb, 2003, that whether Steve Bechler's passing (23 year old Baltimore Oriole pitcher) should prompt baseball to ban ephedra-based products is a more complicated matter, one that raises questions of civil rights and individual responsibilities, and about the gap between medical opinion and governmental regulations. But Steve Bechler's death blamed on ephedra is a good example of exactly what I'm saying. At the time of his death, H. J. Roberts, M.D. immediately called the Broward County medical examiner, Dr. Joshua Perper and asked him how many diet drinks was Bechler drinking. Dr. Perper didn't even know why he asked. The Idaho Observer wrote the story, Aspartame Poisoning Cover for Ephedra. It was finally disclosed Steve Belcher had a weight problem, he would go without eating for a couple of days and then drink diet pop with aspartame all day. He had a family history of heart problems and aspartame destroys the heart. After researching the issue its obvious that Steve Bechler did not die because he was using ephedra, it was just another aspartame death! Even Dr. Perper could only conclude that ephedrine "probably contributed" to his death but this doctor was not knowledgeable of aspartame's effect on the heart nor did he know that Steve Belcher was using it.

Consider silicone breast implants. These women who were concerned about beauty are the very same class of women concerned about weight. And even though aspartame is not even a diet product, but rather a neurotoxic drug that makes you crave carbohydrates, these women didn't know that. Studies were done on silicone and found not to cause systemic disease. Yet women were coming down with such things as multiple sclerosis and lupus. Aspartame has triggered a tremendous epidemic of MS and lupus. Basically it destroys the central nervous system and mimics MS. (See position paper by Dr. H. J. Roberts, MS or Aspartame Disease? on http://www.dorway.com) And we've gotten many off this toxin and had them walk out of wheelchairs, and some even reported their lesions disappeared. As to lupus, Dr. James Bowen pointed out that aspartame is an adjuvant, forms antigenic tissue, triggering immunologic attack. "The ability of methyl alcohol/formaldehyde to create antigenicity, especially as combined in aspartame molecules is so great as to cause severe autoimmune reactions to the tissues deformed by formaldehyde polemerization, adduct formation. The immune system turns against the victim's tissues: lupus." Did anyone ask the silicone breast implant victims if they were using aspartame? This is not to say that there aren't problems with silicone breast implants, especially if they rupture. An informant who called said he had worked with aspartame, formaldehyde, silicone and Kodak, and the problem is that when these silicone breast implants rupture and come in contact with the formaldehyde from aspartame, you will get all kinds of deformities. The President of DOW was concerned enough to contact Dr. Roberts but what happened after getting the facts we will probably never know. Did he contact Monsanto? Who knows. But they paid off in class action. Dr. Roberts wrote a small book on silicone breast implants and aspartame. http://www.sunsentpress.com

Dr. Bowen says because of aspartame's extreme toxicity even minute doses are destructive, damaging fetal nervous systems and related structures. Eyes and hearing come to mind. All tissues are similarly damaged as beyond its functional neurological intoxicating effects, methyl alcohol/formaldehyde is the strongest organic base in the living organism and is a polymerizing agent, turning tissue into plastic. From such poisoning there is no escape, it is obligatory metabolism by alcoholdehydrogenase of methyl alcohol into nascent formaldehyde, occurring 75% in the cytosol (cytoplasm) and 25% in the mitochondria. Ask the FDA why they allow aspartame on the market with free methyl alcohol. I guarantee they will not answer you. Dr. Roberts has asked them for years.

So again, we're back to the same point. It's like when Tryptophan was banned by the FDA after some deaths. No health food store would have sold it had they known it came from a manufacturer using genetic engineering. It was an isolated case. It had nothing to do with whether tryptophan was safe. It just wasn't safe to be sold in a health food store at $5.99. The last time I checked it was safe for a pharmaceutical company to sell a smaller amount of tryptophan for over $100.00 a bottle, and that was years ago.

The situation was stated correctly during congressional hearings. Cynthia Culmo, R.Ph., a former official with the Texas Department of Health said: "The situation isn't a scientific issue any longer. It's a political issue, won by a political agenda."

John W. Olney, M.D., was asked by the Ephedra Education Council to review some of the FDA cases. Go to (http://www.ephedrafacts.com) for the full report. Dr. Olney, one of the most renowned neuroscientists in the world founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity. Read his CV on www.dorway.com In l969 he published in Science, evidence that monosodium glutamate (MSG), destroys nerve cells in the brain when fed to infant animals. He also published evidence demonstrating that aspartame (NutraSweet) destroys nerve cells when fed to infant animals, and published evidence linking aspartame ingestion to an increased incidence of malignant brain tumors.

Dr. Olney along with Attorney James Turner, Washington, D.C. did everything possible to try and prevent the approval of aspartame. His excellent report to the Board of Inquiry of the FDA even explaining what would happen to the brains of our kids (prophecy fulfilled) is on CD and available from www.greatfallspro.com along with the Congressional Record on aspartame and the Board of Inquiry report of the FDA saying aspartame is not safe and should not be approved.

The adverse event reports Dr. Olney examined include those reviewed for FDA by Doctors Ricaute and Stoll. Dr. Olney says out of 28 cases, there is not a single case that the expert reviewers rated as having a highly probable causal association with ingestion of Ephedra.

In Case #12837, a self acknowledged cocaine addict inquires whether there are any class action lawsuits pending against ephedrine he can get in on.

In Case #13380 this 18 year old college student worked out with weights. Brought unconscious to the hospital but expired in a "brain dead" condition the following day, it was the opinion of the neurologist who examined him and analyzed his CT scan this was a typical case of a ruptured berry aneurysm. Dr. Olney stated these aneurysms typically rupture at some point in early to mid-adulthood when an individual is physically straining, as in lifting weights. The blood screen for drugs revealed no detectable level of ephedrine but the urine analysis revealed trace amounts of ephedrine and norephedrine, suggesting he may have taken some preparation containing a small amount of ephedrine.

Dr. Olney points out the letter from Dr. Ricaute while concluding Ephedra represents a significant public risk, not to the general population but to specific individuals who have increased vulnerability to certain illness perhaps in combination with other stimulants. So that Olney says what Dr. Ricaurte has expressed is the type of concern that might be expressed for sodium chloride (common table salt) or caffeine.

In putting the situation in context, Dr. Olney says: "In that Dr. Ricaurte has not identified any EA related risk of central nervous system effects in the general population, his expert opinion does not strengthen, but rather weakens, the FDA position. In fact, Dr. Ricaurte's statement serves to highlight a basic insistency in the FDA position, which is that the regulatory agency is apparently attempting to apply a DOUBLE STANDARD, one standard for common constituents and/or additive to foods (e.g. sodium chloride, caffeine) which FDA does not attempt to police in the marketplace, and another standard for a dietary supplement Ephedra which FDA appears to be attempting to police. The FDA position is rendered even more untenable by the fact that the agency appears to be trying to police ephedrine in the dietary supplement marketplace but not in the over-the-counter marketplace. Thus, there appear to be glaring inconsistencies in the FDA position, regarding Ephedra, and Dr. Ricaurte's expert statement helps to make these inconsistencies apparent.

In Case 12464 a father believes his 22 year old son is addicted to "Ripped Fuel". There is no evidence of addiction provided and Dr. Olney says this twitching about the mouth reported known in medicine as a "perioral dyskinesia" or "perioral tic" is a common affliction frequently seen in ones who have never ingested Ephedra.

Talking about addiction, consider aspartame. The chronic methanol poisoning affects the dopamine system of the brain and causes the addiction. Methanol is classified as a narcotic. Four support groups on line expose the suffering of those trying to break this addiction and get over the afflictions this chemical poison causes that fill a 1000 page medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, by H. J. Roberts, M.D. http://www.sunsentpress.com or 1-800-827-7991

In the case of Fleming the chronic methanol poisoning on autopsy from aspartame was thought to be murder, and his wife Diane, a sweet Sunday School teacher was sentenced to 50 years in a hardened Virginia prison. The FDA knows about this case but has no concern. Nor do they show any concern sudden cardiac death is the nation's #1 killer ending the lives of about a half a million people a year without warning, and that 2/3rds of the population is on this neurotoxic drug masquerading as an additive, as well as 40% of our children. The FDA is concerned about an herb, Chinese Mahaung that has been used for thousands of years.

Continuing with Dr. Olney report, case 12860. Here a mother believes her son's behavior has changed since he started taking an unidentified Ephedra product being distributed at a local gym. It seems her son has left his wife who is eight months pregnant, is drinking excessively and has stopped going to church. The son denies he has a problem.

Dr. Ricaurte suggested humans consuming Ephedra might place them at a high risk to develop parkinsonism. Dr. Olney pointed out this would seem highly speculative in that Parkinsonism involves a massive loss of dopamine nerve cells, causing the symptoms of tremor, disturbance in gait, etc. Yet animals exposed to Ephedra have not been shown to have a loss of dopamine nerve cells. Dr. Olney in discussing Dr. Ricaurte comments about Parkinsonism having to do with ephedra said: "... but if the animal data predict a type of risk (early onset of Parkinsonism) that has never materialized in two thousands years of human Ephedra consumption, these animal findings would appear to have no human relevance."

In the case of aspartame, it is so responsible for Parkinson's that it's already documented in three medical texts, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, and Defense Against Alzheimers Disease by H. J. Roberts, M.D., and Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills by neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D. As Dr. James Bowen brought out in a paper relating to the Gulf War Syndrome, (http://www.wnho.net), aspartic acid, the excitotoxic component of aspartame does not cross the blood brain barrier but is secreted into the cerebral spinal fluid by the choroid plexus located in the ventricles of the brain. There, in the brain's lower area and upper terminus of the spinal cord is where Parkinson's Disease is most prominent, as well as Lou Gehrigs and Multiple Sclerosis. These critical locations are bathed in the toxin as it removes from the blood. From the third to fourth ventricle there is a narrow canal called sylvian aqueduct which fills with this secretion and washes the roof of the hypothalamus. But the FDA with full knowledge pays no attention even though they know it even interacts with L-dopa and other Parkinson drugs. So Parkinson patients like Michael Fox, for instance, has no way of being warned. A former Diet Pepsi spokesman once made the comment that he didn't understand how he could get an old man's disease at the age of 30. Just get those supplements away from the public so the pharmaceutical companies can increase their greed every year. There is even a book about it by Mike Fillon, The Truth About Ephedra. He uncovers a scandalous connection between the pharmaceutical industry and government regulators to attack dietary supplements.

If the FDA were concerned about Parkinson's Disease and consumer safety there would be a lot of things banned. In Health & Nutrition Secrets To Save Your Life by neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., there is discussion about aspartame and even mercury in triggering Parkinson's. And he says in l976 Dr. Wolfgang Klein and co-workers demonstrated that cells exposed to 1 ppm fluoride exhibit a 50 percent reduction in DNA repair enzyme activity. Not only does this increase cancer risk it also encourages aggravation of degenerative diseases of the nervous system such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Lou Gehrigs disease (ALS), as well as other degenerative diseases of aging. When unrepaired DNA damage occurs in reproductive cells, the damage is passed on to children as well. It has been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt how deadly are vaccines with mercury, and amalgams. And fluoride is a deadly, deadly neurotoxin. If the FDA was concerned about Parkinson's disease, the first to go would be aspartame, MSG, and mercury long, long ago.

Dr. Blaylock brings out a profound point in this book, and that is in the case of diet drinks in aluminum cans, the very toxic brain aluminum fluoride compound co-exists with multiple toxins found in aspartame, thus creating the most powerful government approved toxic soup imaginable! And the FDA is concerned about ephedra, the healthful herbal plant, mahaung???? To ban ephedra with aspartame on the market is like choosing to ban brussel sprouts instead of cyanide!

Ephedra is a wonderful herb and it would be disastrous if herbalists lose the ability to use it. It's one of the best bronchodilators from the plant kingdom that is extremely valuable when used for asthma and allergies. Without it, one would have to turn to drugs which is what the pharmaceutical industry wants. After all, the proof of drug company influence is that far higher doses of the concentrated synthetic analog of ephedra are still available, and in far higher doses per pill than the herbal form, as brought out by Allan Spreen, M.D. Sudafed stands for pseudo-ephedrine. He says there is no limit on the dose you might want to take. Dr. Spreen made the point hundreds of people die every year due to complications associated with aspirin and acetaminophen. But they are not going to take aspirin off the market.

Aspartame interacts with all cardiac medication, all anti-depressants, L-dopa, Coumadin, hormones and even insulin. The FDA knows it and shows no concern whatsoever. To make matters worse they lie to the public and tell them its safe when their own Board of Inquiry Report said its not and asked that aspartame not be approved. It was Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes who over-ruled that report. At the time Don Rumsfeld was CEO and said he would call in his markers and get it approved, which is in the Congressional Record and an eight month investigation of aspartame by United Press International (http://www.dorway.com).

Aspartame simulates and aggravates diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, and even can precipitate diabetes. Aspartame is responsible for macular degeneration, diabetic blindness and glaucoma, known to result from excitotoxin accumulation in the retina. Aspartame not only can precipitate neurodegenerative disease but naturally they are worsened by aspartame and other excitotoxins. In addition, we now have good evidence that excitotoxins play a major role in exacerbation of MS and other demyelinating disorders including trigeminal neuralia. New studies have shown that excitotoxins trigger significant elevation of free radicals in the lining (endothelial cells) of arteries which means that products with aspartame can increase the incidence of heart attacks and strokes. And there is a tumor connection not only brain tumors, but mammary, testicular, thyroid, uterine, ovarian and pancreatic for starters. It is a Class A carcinogen and the FDA's own toxicologist, the late Dr. Adrian Gross, told Congress aspartame violated the Delaney Amendment which forbid putting something in food you know will cause cancer because without a shadow of a doubt it can trigger brain tumors and brain cancer. (Congressional Record SID835:131, August 1, l985).

Dr. Olney concluded in his report the FDA position is self-contradictory. "The reality is that ephedrine and its analogs have been in widespread use of OTC drugs for many years, during which neither their abuse potential nor their adverse side effect potential has been sufficiently impressive to cause FDA to even impose stringent labeling requirements on the OTC use of these agents. For many years, consumers have been ingesting large amounts of caffeine in coffee, tea, caffeinated soft drinks, etc. together with OTC ephedrine, and FDA has shown no concern that ingesting these sources of caffeine together with OTC ephedrine poses a problem from the standpoint of either abuse potential or side effect potential. To the best of my knowledge, FDA has not established that ephedra contained in dietary supplement preparations is less safe than ephedrine contained in OTC preparations. Given FDA's precedent of inaction and lack of concern regarding the use of OTC ephedrine, either alone or in combination with multiple sources of caffeine, it seems inconsistent and self contradictory for FDA to now claim that dietary supplement sources of ephedrine (but not OTC sources of ephedrine) pose a serious publish health problem."


Personal note to FDA:

I would like to know how you would ever know if there is an ephedra reaction. It has been used for thousands of years without problems. Inasmuch, as aspartame is a seizure triggering drug that destroys the immune system, the central nervous system, the brain and the optic nerve, and ravages every organ in the system, unless you asked specifically if the consumer was using aspartame, there would be no way of knowing if these reactions were simply not the result of the Aspartame Disease Epidemic FDA approved in l981.

For years I've received comments from people who happened to run into one of the three scientists who worked on the aspartame project who left Searle in disgust. One lady said years ago "he said one day they will be dropping in the streets", and that is what is happening. I've already sent you the report on sudden death and aspartame. The autopsies of athletes that have been reported are classic of what you would find with aspartame even including cardiomyopathy. As Dr. James Bowen said in a paper cardiomyopathy from toxic and auto immune causes has long been appreciated. Since aspartame is indeed a toxic, mitochondrial and auto immune killer who could expect less! The heart is especially targeted in alcohol poisonings of all kinds. Since the intact aspartame molecule is an alcohol poison about twenty thousand times as toxic as most beverage alcohols, and since most of the damage from the beverage alcohol comes from its methanol content, aspartame, which has the methanol-formaldehyde-formic acid toxic axis as one of its highly aggravated toxic components, could very predictably cause extreme damage of all organs in the body.

H. J. Roberts, M.D., in his recent article, Aspartame Disease: An FDA-Approved Epidemic wrote that products containing the chemical sweetener aspartame can have multiple neurotoxic, metabolic, allergenic, fetal and carcinogen effects. Further he said, "The existence of aspartame disease continues to be denied by the FDA and powerful corporate entities. Its magnitude, however, warrants removal of this chemical as an "imminent public health threat". The use of aspartame products by over two-thirds of the population, and inadequate evaluation by corporate-partial investigators underscore this opinion."

How do you allow a chemical poison on the market that interacts with just about very drug used to treat the problems it causes? John Hammell, President of the International Advocates for Health Freedom wrote: "The FDA ban on ephedra is illegal under the Administrative Procedures Act. Under the law, the FDA must act in a consistent way in their regulations. It is not legal for the FDA to ban the herb ma huang (ephedra) while leaving pseudoephedrine, which is far more dangerous, on the market in a slew of OTC cold formulas marketed by multinational drugs companies." He refers people to http://www.ephedrafacts.com to keep things in perspective and says: "If this ban is not challenged in court and overturned, it will set a horrible legal precent that would enable the FDA to ban literally ANY dietary supplement under equally false pretenses. All the FDA is actually doing with this ban is protecting the prescription market of pharmaceutical weight loss medication which is far more dangerous than ephedra. My concern is the ban on ephedra may not serve as the wake up call to the supplement industry that it should. This is an industry which has been set up for global destruction, but most vitamin companies, health food stores and consumers don't realize what's going on or what to do about it. That is because vitamin trade associations world wide are being denominated the top down by pharmaceutical interests which are actively keeping them in the dark regarding Codex, the EU Food Supplement Directive, and related globalization issues." A new article discusses this: http://www.thehealthcrusader.com/pgs/CrusadorNewsletterJan04.pdf - "Europe Declares War Against Supplements!! Directive to Ban Many Producers!" Had I known about the article and had the opportunity to speak to the writer, I would have told him the matter is far worse than thought. I have received several calls from the UK complaining of severe medical problems because they received pharmaceutical supplements that contained aspartame. One lady had almost lost her vision because of aspartame in her calcium. As you well know since the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington, D.C. petitioned the FDA in l986 to ban aspartame because of seizures and blindness, the methanol converts to formaldehyde and formic acid in the retina of the eye and destroys the optic nerve.

And this reminds me - my citizens petition for banning aspartame on the basis that FDA records show aspartame to be a chemical poison, and yet FDA lies to the public, has yet to be answered. The law allows 180 days and its been over a year and a half. Your excuse of "competing priorities" is an example of how you refuse to answer when you know it will prove your guilt, and how the FDA is legend at serving above the law. Even Jerome Bressler said his FDA audit (www.dorway.com) was so damning of aspartame that FDA had the worst 20% removed when it was retyped. Dr. Roberts who he also spoke with had his congressman tell FDA to send the omitted part. The FDA letter mentioned that sometimes things are confidential. I would imagine they are always confidential when they indict the FDA of wrong-doing.

I write this report in the hope every member of Congress will receive the real facts, and a court action will finally provide justice for the consumer.


Dr. Betty Martini
Founder, Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
http://www.dorway.com
http://www.wnho.net