[Health&Healthing] Nazis, Nutrasweet and Monsanto

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Misty L. Trepke

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A long article, but very worthwhile.

 

Nazis,Nutrasweet and Monsanto

 

 

Nutrapoison

 

by Alex Constantine

" I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist

and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle.

Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63,

" The Spirit of Enterprise " , 1934. "

 

The FDA is ever mindful to refer to aspartame, widely known as

NutraSweet, as a " food additive " - never a " drug. " A " drug " on the

label of a Diet Coke might discourage the consumer. And because

aspartame is classified a food additive, adverse reactions are not

reported to a federal agency, nor is continued safety monitoring

required by law.1 NutraSweet is a non-nutritive sweetener. The brand

name is misnomer. Try Non-NutraSweet.

 

Food additives seldom cause brain lesions, headaches, mood

alterations, skin polyps, blindness, brain tumors, insomnia and

depression, or erode intelligence and short-term memory. Aspartame,

according to some of the most capable scientists in the country,

does. In 1991 the National Institutes of Health, a branch of the

Department of Health and Human Services, published a

bibliography, " Adverse Effects of Aspartame " , listing not less than

167 reasons to avoid it.2

 

Aspartame is an rDNA derivative, a combination of two amino acids

(long supplied by a pair of Maryland biotechnology firms: Genex

Corp. of Rockville and Purification Engineering in Baltimore.)3 The

Pentagon once listed it in an inventory of prospective biochemical

warfare weapons submitted to Congress.4 But instead of poisoning

enemy populations, the " food additive " is currently marketed as a

sweetening agent in some 1200 food products.

 

In light of the chemo-warfare implications, the pasts of G.D. Searle

and aspartame are ominous. Established in 1888 on the north side of

Chicago, G.D. Searle has long been a fixture of the medical

establishment. The company manufactures everything from prescription

drugs to nuclear imaging optical equipment.5

s of G.D. Searle include such geopolitical heavy-hitters as

Andre M. de Staercke, Reagan's ambassador to Belgium and Reuben

Richards, an executive vice president at Citibank. Also Arthur Wood,

the retired CEO of Sears, Roebuck & C disgorged by the clan of

General Robert E. Wood, wartime chairman of the America First

Committee.6 America Firsters, organized by native Nazis cloaked as

isolationists, were quietly financed by the likes of Sullivan &

Cromwell's Allen Dulles and Edwin Webster of Kidder, Peabody.7

 

Until the acquisition by Monsanto in 1985, the firm's chairman was

William L. Searle, a Harvard graduate, Naval reservist and - a grim

irony in view of aspartame's adverse effects - an officer in the

Army Chemical Corps in the early 1950s, when the same division

tested LSD on groups of human subjects in concert with the CIA.8 The

chief of the Chemical Warfare Division at this time was Dr. Laurence

Laird Layton,whose son Larry was convicted for the murder of

Congressman Leo Ryan at Jonestown ( " Come to the pavilion! What a

legacy! " ). Jonestown, of course, bore a remarkable likeness to a

concentration camp, and kept a full store of pharmaceutical drugs.

(The Jonestown pharmacy was stocked with a variety of behavior

control drugs: qualudes, valium, morphine, demerol and 11,000 doses

of thorazine - a better supply, in fact, than the Guyanese

government's own, not to mention a surfeit of cyanide.9)

 

Dr. Layton was married to the daughter of Hugo Phillip, a German

banker and stockbroker representing the likes of Siemens & Halske,

the makers of cyanide for the Final Solution, and I.G. Farben, the

manufacturer of a lethal nerve gas put to the same purpose.10 Dr.

Layton, a Quaker, developed a form of purified uranium used to set

off the Manhattan Project's first self-sustaining chain reaction at

the University of Chicago in 1942 by his wife's German-born Uncle,

Dr. James Franck. At Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Dr. Layton

concentrated his efforts, as did I.G. Farben, on the development of

nerve gasses.11

 

Dr. Layton later defended his participation in the Army's chemical

warfare section: " You can blow people to bits with bombs, you can

shoot them with shells, you can atomize them with atomic bombs, but

the same people think there's something terrible about poisoning the

air and letting people breath it. Anything having to do with gas

warfare, chemical warfare, has this taint of horror on it, even if

you only make people vomit. " 12

 

Nazis and chemical warfare are recurring themes in the aspartame

story. Currently, the chief patent holder of the sweetener is the

Monsanto Co., based in St. Louis. In 1967, Monsanto entered into a

joint venture with I.G. Farbenfabriken, the aforementioned financial

core of the Hitler regime and the key supplier of poison gas to the

Nazi racial extermination program. After the Holocaust, the German

chemical firm joined with American counterparts in the development

of chemical warfare agents and founded the " Chemagrow Corporation "

in Kansas City, Missouri, a front that employed German and American

specialists on behalf of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps.13

 

Dr. Otto Bayer, I.G.'s research director, had a binding relationship

with Monsanto chemists.14 In the post-war period, Dr. Bayer

developed and tested chemical warfare agents with Dr. Gerhard

Schrader, the Nazi concocter of Tabun, the preferred nerve gas of

the SS. Schrader was also an organophosphate pioneer, and tested the

poison on populated areas of West Germany under the guise of killing

insects.15 Schrader's experiments reek suspiciously of the ongoing

aerial application of malathion - developed by Dr. Schrader, a

recruit of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service when Germany

surrendered - in present-day Southern Califonia.16

 

Another bridge to I.G. Farben was Monsanto's acquisition of American

Viscose, long owned by the England's Courtauld family. As early as

1928, the U.S. Commerce Department issued a report critical of the

Courtauld's ties to I.G. Farben and the Nazi party.17 Incredibly,

George Courtauld was handed an appointment as director of personnel

for England's Special Operations Executive, the wartime intelligence

service, in 1940.18 A year later, with the exhaustion of British

military financial reserves, American Viscose, worth $120 million

was put on the block in New York. The desperate British

treasury received less than half that amount from the sale, brokered

by Siegmund Warburg, among others. 19 Monsanto acquired the company

in 1949.20

 

The Nazi connection to Monsanto crops up again on the board of

directors with John Reed, a former crony of " Putzi " Hanfstangl, a

Harvard-bred emigre to Germany who talked Hitler out of committing

suicide in 1924 and contributed to the financing of " Mein Kampf " . 21

Reed is also chairman of Citibank and long a confederate of the CIA.

According to a lawsuit filed by San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli,

Reed was an instigator, with Ronald Reagan, James Baker and Margaret

Thatcher, of the " Purple Ink Document, " a plan to finance CIA covert

operations with wartime Japanese gold stolen from a buried

Philippine hoard.22

 

Other covert military connections to Monsanto include Dr. Charles

Allen Thomas, chairman of the Monsanto Board, 1965[?]. Dr. Thomas

directed a group of scientists during WW Il in the refinement of

plutonium for use in the atomic bomb. In the postwar period Monsanto

operated Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratories for the

Manhattan Project.23 (Manhattan gestated with the Oak Ridge

Institute for Nuclear Studies, where Lethal doses of radiation

were tested on 200 unwary cancer patients, turning them into " nuclear

calibration devices " gratis the AEC and NASA, until 1974. 24) Nazi

scientists and a 7,000 ton stockpile of uranium were delivered to the

Project by its security and counter-intelligence director, Col.

Boris Pash, a G2 designate to the CIA's Bloodstone program-and

the " eminence grise " of PB/7, a clandestine Nazi unit that,

according to State Department records, conducted a regimen of

political assassinations and kidnappings in Europe and the Eastern

bloc.25

 

Monsanto Director William Ruckelshaus was an acting director of the

FBI under Richard Nixon, a period in the Bureau's history marred by

COINTELPRO outrages, including assassinations. Nixon subsequently

appointed Ruckelshaus to the position of EPA director, a nagging

irony given his ties to industry (Browning Ferris and Cummins Engine

Co.). CIA counterintelligentsia on the Monsanto board include

Stansfield Turner, a former Director of Central Intelligence, and

Earle H. Harbison, an Agency information specialist for nineteen

years.

 

Harbison is also a director of Merrill Lynch, and thus raises the

spectre of CIA drug dealing. ln 1984 President Ronald Reagan's

Commission on Organized Crime concluded that Merrill Lynch employed

couriers " observed transferring enormous amounts of cash through

investment houses and banks in New York City to Italy and

Switzerland. Tens of millions of dollars in heroin sales

in this country were transferred over seas. " Merrill Lynch invested

the drug proceeds in the New bullion market before making the

offshore transfers. 26

 

As might be expected in view of Monsanto's Nazi, chemical warfare

and CIA ties, NutraSweet is a can of worms unprecedented in the

American food industry. The history of the product is laden with

flawed and fabricated research findings and, when necessary to

further the product along, blatant lies - the basis of FDA approval

and the incredulity of independent medical researchers.

 

Senator Metzenbaum described the FDA as " the handmaiden " of the drug

industry in 1985, but she comports under all regimes. In the Clinton

administration for example, Mike Taylor was graced with the position

of deputy director of the FDA. Taylor is a cousin of Tipper Gore,

Vice President Albert Gore's wife, and once an outside counsel to

Monsanto. (Gore voted with Senate conservatives in 1985 against

aspartame labelling.)

 

Under the tutelage of the Clinton administration, one Chicago

reporter quipped, the FDA strictly enforces one " unwritten "

violation of law - failure to bribe.

 

Granitic Believers

 

G.D. Sear!e, the pharmaceutical firm that introduced NutraSweet,

worked symbiotically with federal and congressional officials,

bribed investigators when violations of law were exposed, " anything "

to move aspartame to market. As far back as 1969, an internal

Searle " strategy memo " concluded the company must obtain FDA

approval to outpace firms competing for the artificial sweetener

market. Another memo in December 1970 urged that FDA officials were

to be " brought into a subconscious spirit of participation "

with Searle.27 To that end, with enormous profits at stake, the

pharmaceutical house set out on a long struggle to transform the

Pentagon's biochemical warfare agent into " the taste Mother Nature

intended. "

 

The official story is that aspartame was discovered in 1966 by a

scientist developing an ulcer drug (not a " food additive " ).

Supposedly he discovered, upon carelessly licking his fingers that

they tasted sweet. Thus was the chemicals industry blessed with a

successor to saccharine, the coal-tar derivative that foundered

eight years later under the pressure of cancer concerns.

 

Aspartame found early opposition in consumer attorney James Turner,

author of " The Chemical Feast " and a former Nader's Raider. At his

own expense, Turner fought approval for ten years, basing his

argument on aspartame's potential side effects, particularly on

children. His concern was shared by Dr. John Olney, Professor of

neuropathology and psychiatry at Washington School of Medicine in

St. Louis. Dr. Olney found that aspartame, combined with MSG

seasoning, increased the odds of brain damage in children.

 

Other studies have found that children are especially vulnerable to

its toxic effects, a measure of the relation between consumption and

body weight. The FDA determined in 1981, when the sweetener was

approved, that the maximum projected intake of Aspartame is 50

milligrams a day per kilogram of body weight. A child of 66 pounds

would consume about 23 milligrams by imbibing four cans of Diet

Coke. The child might also conceivably down an aspartame-flavored

snack or two, nearing the FDA's projected maximum daily intake.29

Dr. William Partridge, a professor of neuroendocrine regulation at

MIT, told " Common Cause " in August 1984 that it wouldn't be

surprising if a child - " confronted with aspartame contained in

iced tea chocolate milk, milk shakes, chocolate pudding pie, Jello,

ice cream and numerous other products " - consumed 50 milligrams per

kilogram in a day.

 

Internally, aspartame breaks down into its constituent amino acids

and methanol, which degrades into formaldehyde. The FDA announced in

1984 that " no evidence " has been found to establish that the

methanol byproduct reaches toxic levels, claiming that " many fruit

juices contain higher levels of the natural compound. " 30 But

the " Medical World News " had already reported in 1978 that the

methanol content of aspartame is 1,000 times greater than most foods

under FDA control.31

 

NutraSweet, the " good stuff " of sentimental adverts, is a truly

insidious product. According to independent trials, aspartame intake

is shown by animal studies to alter brain chemicals affecting

behavior. Aspartame's effects on the brain led Richard Wurtman, an

MIT neuroscientist, to the discovery, as recorded in " The New

England Journal of Medicine " (No. 309, 1983), that the sweetener

defeats its purpose as a diet aid, since high doses may instill a

craving for calorie-laden carbohydrates. One of his pilot studies

found that the NutraSweet-carbohydrate combination increases

the " sweetener's effect on brain composition. " Searle officials

denigrated Wurtman's findings, but the American Cancer Society has

since confirmed the irony - after tracking 80,000 women for six

years- that " among women who gained weight, artificial sweetener

users gained more than those who didn't use the products, " as

reported in " Medical Self-Care " (387). (Since his battle with G.D.

Searle, Wurtman founded Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,

the producer of a sports drink that enhances athletic performance,

and a weight loss drug marketed in over 40 countries. Wurtman's

share of the company, established in 1989, was worth $10 million by

1992. 32

 

Even more daunting are the findings of Dr. Paul Spiers, a

neuropsychologist at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, that aspartame

use can depress intelligence. For this reason, he selected

experimental subjects with a history of consuming it but unaware

that they might be suffering ill effects. The subjects were given

NutraSweet in capsules of the FDA's allowable limit. Spiers was

alarmed to discover that they developed " cognitive deficits. " One of

the tests required recall of square patterns and alphabetical

sequences, becoming increasingly more difficult. The test

is challenging, but most people improve as they learn how it is

done. The aspartame users, however, did not improve. " Some frankly

showed a reverse pattern, " said Spiers. " 33

 

Aspartame has been shown to erode short-term memory. At the May, 1985

hearings on NutraSweet, Louisiana Senator Russell Long related a

bizarre anecdote: SENATOR LONG: I have received a letter recently

from a person who is well known to me and whose word is impeccable,

as far as I am concerned. This person told me that she had been

dieting and she had been using diet drinks with aspartame in it. She

said she found her memory was going. She seemed to be completely

losing her memory. When she would meet people whom she knew

intimately, she could not recall what their name was, or even who

they were. She could not recall a good bit of that which was going

on about her to the extent that she was afraid she was losing her

mind. . . In due course, someone suggested that it might be this

NutraSweet, so she stopped using it and her memory came back and her

mind was restored. Senator Howard Metzenbaum replied that he had

received " a number of letters from doctors reporting similar

developments. . . There have been hundreds of incidents of

people who have suffered loss of memory, headaches, dizziness, and

other neurological symptoms which they feel are related to

aspartame. " 34 Senator Orrin Hatch, a hidebound archconservative and

NutraSweet advocate, downplayed criticism of the sugar

substitute. " Some people have lost their memory after drinking a

variety of things, " he argued. " The bottom line is this: The studies

supporting aspartame's approval have been examined and reexamined.

More than enough sound, valid studies exist to demonstrate

aspartame's safety. "

 

Hatch of Utah, reports the " Wall Street Journal " , has " given his

strong support of the pharmaceutical industries. " 35 So have

the " Hatchlings. " David Kessler, FDA Commissioner under presidents

Bush and Clinton, was once an aide to Orrin Hatch. Hatch's former

campaign manager and aide, C. McClain Haddow, was sentenced to

prison for conflict-of-interest charges arising from his work as a

Reagan administration health official. And Thomas Parry, Hatch's

former chief of staff, has carved a sumptuous life for himself as a

Republican fund-raiser and lobbyist with clients in the

pharmaceutical industry. All told, Parry represents 30 clients,

including Eli Lilly, Warner-Lambert, and Johnson & Johnson, not to

mention ranking defense firms and the Bahamas government. Parry's

pharmaceutical clients have enriched Senator Hatch's campaign

coffers, and in turn Hatch lavishes his attentions on them.

 

By the time Orrin Hatch was stumping for NutraSweet in the U.S.

Senate, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta had received 600

letters complaining of NutraSweet's adverse effects. The National

Soft Drink Association (NSDA) had them too. " There have been

hundreds of reports from around the country suggesting a possible

relationship between their consumption of NutraSweet and subsequent

symptoms including headaches, aberrational behavior, slurred

speech, etc. " FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes, appointed by

Ronald Reagan in April, 1981 (moving the " New York Times " to observe

that " some industry officials consider Dr. Hayes more sympathetic to

their viewpoints than past holders of the office " ), considered such

complaints " anecdotal. "

 

Of course, like scores of other conservatives roaming the executive

branch in the 1980s, the ethics of Arthur Hull Hayes were entirely

malleable - not only did he approve a product based on studies that

were " scientifically lacking in design and execution, " according to

a report issued by " Science Times " in February 1985, but upon

leaving the FDA he took the post of senior medical consultant for

Burson-Marsteller, the public relations firm retained by G.D.

Searle.37

 

Burson-Marsteller, a huge public relations conglomerate, swelled in

the 1980s by leveraging smaller competitors - including Black,

Manafort, Stone & Kelley, a lobbying firm best known for influence

peddling along the Beltway - presently outsizing even the Hill &

Knowlton empire. Typical in the aspartame story are Burson-

Marsteller's links to the intelligence community and rightwing

operatives of the GOP. Thomas Devereaux Bell, Jr., an executive

officer of the firm, is the former chairman of the Center for

naval Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia. Bell was also the executive

director of Ronald Reagan's Inaugural Ball Committee (in which

capacity he ushered in the likes of Licio Gelli, head of P2, the

notorious Italian secret society). Bell's career in Washington

began in 1971 as a deputy director of Richard Nixon's Committee to

ReElect the President. He went on to serve as an administrative aide

to Senator William Brock and the Reagan transition team.38

 

At the FDA, Hayes used aspartame as a political statement that the

Reagan administration was embarking on a grand voyage of

conservative " regulatory reform, " sluicing through treasonous

liberal constraints on " free enterprise. " Despite what one FDA

scientist described as 'very serious' questions concerning pivotal

brain tumor tests, Hayes eagerly approved aspartame for use in dry

foods in July 1981.39 Three FDA scientists advised against the

approval of aspartame, citing G.D. Searle's own brain tumor

tests, because there was no proof that " aspartame is safe for use as

a food additive under its intended conditions of use. " 40

 

Hayes has since declined to answer any questions about his decision,

which ignored the recommendations of the FDA's own board of inquiry.

He relied instead on a study conducted by Japan's Ajinomoto, Inc.-a

licensee of G.D. Searle. Hayes acknowledged in his 1981 decision

that he had only consulted a preliminary report of the Japanese

evaluation, and only *skimmed* it. More serious, Hayes violated

federal law by basing approval on the test, as it had not been

reviewed by the FDA board.41

 

Who is Arthur Hull Hayes? He was no disinterested bureaucrat. True

to the biochemical theme of the aspartame story, Dr. Hayes served in

the Army Medical Corps in the 1960s. According to the _Washington

Post_, Hayes was assigned to Edgewood Arsenal at Fort Detrick,

Maryland, the Army's chemical warfare base of operations, " one of a

number of doctors who conducted drug tests for the Army on

volunteers . . . to determine the effect of a mind-disorienting drug

called CAR 301,060. " According to a declassified 1976

report prepared by the Army Inspector General, Hayes had planned a

research study to develop the mind-altering CAR 301,060 as a *crowd

control agent.* In 1972, Hayes left Edgewood Arsenal, and a new

plan for the experiments was drawn up by Edgewood physicians. The

1976 report notes that similar tests had been conducted before Hayes

took charge. 42

 

Also at the center of the effort to land FDA approval of NutraSweet

stood Donald Rumsfeld- " Rummy " to his friends -chairman of G.D.

Searle upon leaving the Ford administration in 1977. Rumsfeld, the

product of a wealthy Chicago suburb, was a Princeton graduate and a

Navy pilot during the Korean conflict. He entered politics as a

Congressional House aide attending night classes at Georgetown

University Law School, which is closely aligned with the CIA.43

 

Continued Here:

 

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