NutraSweet The NutraPoison - How the FDA got around reports

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- http://www.copi.com/articles/nutrasweet/nutrapoison.html -

 

 

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NutraSweet: The 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.

 

 

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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

Directors 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 ware 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

Rumsfeld campaigned ambitiously for Richard Nixon, who drafted him to direct

the Office of Equal Opportunity on May 26,1969. He quickly established an office

to spy on his employees in a holy crusade to flush out " revolutionaries " said to

be granting federal funds to politically subversive organizations-a throwback to

McCarthy's tantrums.44 Rumsfeld also figured in Nixon's notorious Power Control

Group, spearheaded by Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman.45 Gerald Ford named

Rumsfeld executive chief of staff upon the resignation of Al Haig. In 1986 he

was named chairman of the Institute for Contemporary Studies, a neoconservative

" think tank " (read: propaganda mill) established in 1972 by Edwin Meese and

Caspar Weinberger. ICS has sponsored such opinion-shaping projects as a study of

expansions in " entitlement programs " and their erosive effects on the economy,

and a book on the uses of coercion by Communist regimes.46 Rumsfeld, at 43,

became the county's youngest secretary of defense. For many years he has been a

vocal proponent of chemical weapons.47 He is chairman of the Rand Corp.48 In

1988, he dropped a presidential bid, and was named a v.p. of Westmark Systems,

led by past NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman. Rumsfeld was one of Westmark's

founding directors, sharing the board with Joseph Amato, a former vice president

at TRW (and a colleague of Inman's at the National Security Agency), and Dale

Frey, chairman of the General Electric Investment Corp.49

Rumsfeld, a veteran political operative, was an adept at the vulgar art of

public relations. He was recruited by G.D. Searle because he had " a Boy Scout

image, " according to one company official.50 A house politician was precisely

what Searle needed to compensate for the damage done by independent researchers

concerned about the toxic effects of aspartame. In March 1976, an FDA task force

brought into question all of the company's testing procedures between 1967 and

1975. The task force described " serious deficiencies in Searle's operations and

practices which undermine the basis for reliance on Searle's integrity. " The

final report of the FDA task force noted faulty and fraudulent product testing,

knowingly misrepresented findings, and instances of " irrelevant or unproductive

animal research where experiments have been poorly conceived, carelessly

executed or inaccurately analyzed. " 51

Richard Merrill, the FDA's chief counsel, petitioned Samuel K. Skinner U.S.

Attorney for the northern district of Illinois, for a grand jury investigation

of Searle's " willful and knowing failure " to submit required test reports, and

for " concealing material facts and making false statements " in reports on

aspartame submitted to the agency.52 Yet industry analysts, interviewed by the

_Wall Street Journal_ six months after Rumsfeld's appointment as chairman, noted

a rapid turnabout in Searle's fortunes as a result of his direction.53

Searle denies that Chairman Rumsfeld ever had any contact with the FDA, or the

Carter and Reagan administrations, to lobby for aspartame.54 But the Wall Street

Journal article reported in 1977 that Rumsfeld " keenly understands the

importance of a public image. So he has been mending fences with the FDA by

personally asking top agency officials what Searle should do to straighten out

its reputation. " Westley M. Dixon, Searle's vice chairman, told the Journal that

without Rumsfeld " we wouldn't have gotten approval for Norpace, " a drug

investigated by the FDA in 1975.55

The grand jury investigation of Searle disintegrated in January, 1977 when the

FDA formally requested that Samuel Skinner, U.S. attorney and a protege of

Illinois Governor James Thompson, investigate the firm for falsifying and

withholding aspartame test data. A month later, Skinner met with attorneys from

Searle's Chicago law firm, Sidley & Austin. Jimmy Carter ascended to The

presidency a few weeks later. He announced that Skinner would not be asked to

remain in office, but the outgoing Republican wasn't found wanting for

employment. He informed reporters that he had already begun " preliminary

discussions " with Sidley & Austin.56

G.D. Searle and Sidley & Austin are Siamese Twins. Edwin Austin, a senior

partner in the law firm, was appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1969.

The Searle family drew upon his services extensively, and he taught Sunday

school in Wilmette, a Chicago suburb, as did Dr. Claude Howard Searle, whose

father cofounded the pharmaceutical house.

The firm is grafted to the beating heart of the Republican party. Morris

Leibman of Sidley & Austin was for many years chairman of the American Bar

Association's " Standing Committee on Law and National Security, " a position that

won him Reagan's Medal of Freedom in 1981.57

John E. Robson, head of Sidley & Austin's Washington office, was appointed

executive vice-president of Searle & Co. in 1977, the same year Skinner was

named a partner in the law firm. Robson, too, was active in Republican politics.

He was the first General Counsel of the Department of Transportation, and at the

behest of Gerald Ford in 1975, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board.58 He

moved on to Searle, and stayed with the company until it was bought outright by

Monsanto in 1985. Howard Trienens, a law clerk to the late chief Justice Vinson

in the early 1950s, was a G.D. Searle director and worked for Sidley & Austin

since 1949.59 Archconservative California Governor George Deukmejian joined

Sidley & Austin's Los Angeles branch upon leaving office in 1991, and is

reportedly making a " very comfortable " living. He has a keen " sense " for

bringing in corporate clients, a partner in the firm told the Los Angeles Times,

many of them past contributors to his campaign fund. Deukmejian's business

connections have given him a reputation as a Sidley & Austin " rainmaker, " but

the L.A. City Council has questioned his ethics in promoting a contract with

Sumitomo Corp. on a metropolitan railway project.60 Searle aside, Sidley &

Austin has served some of the most notorious special interests in the country.

The firm lobbied overtime, for instance, on behalf of Charles Keating's Lincoln

Savings & Loan, and provided counsel on tax issues and dealing with federal

authorities. The firm assisted Keating when Lincoln was foundering, and curried

political favor to keep the S & L operating despite massive debts. As a result,

the firm was forced to settle with Lincoln depositors in 1991, agreeing to cover

an excess of $40 million in claims.6l Sidley & Austin also represented the AMA

when a group of drugstore chains sued seven drug makers-including Searle-for

price fixing and antitrust violations. The lawsuit, filed in October 1993,

amounts to billions of dollars in compensation.62

Skinner recused himself from the Searle prosecution four months before leaving

offtce-asking, in a memo to subordinates, that the matter be kept " confidential

to avoid any undo embarrassment " -a stall that nearly allowed the statute of

limitations to expire. William Conlon, a senior U.S. attorney, inherited the

case. He eased off, citing case load pressures, and gave a deaf ear to

complaints of delays from the Justice Department, which urged that a grand jury

be convened to prosecute Searle for falsifying NutraSweet test data. In January,

1979, Conlon too joined Sidley & Austin.63

The 33-page letter from Merrill to Skinner charged Searle with criminal fraud

in its animal test results. In 1984 Common Cause asked Dan Reidy of the U. S.

attorney's office how the investigation had stalled. Reidy replied that because

it was a grand jury investigation, he was " bound by law to secrecy. " A Searle

spokesman exploited the demise of the grand July claim that there was " no

validity to the charges, that the company had been " exonerated. " Philip Brodsky,

an investigator for the FDA, expressed surprise that Searle hadn't been

indicted. " I thought surely they would prosecute them, " he said.64

Eleven years later Senator Metzenbaum issued a press release charging Skinner

with stalling the criminal investigation as he prepared to decamp from office.

Metzenbaum and his staff demanded an FBI investigation of Skinner's mishandling

of the case. In December 1988, the conflict-of-interest bombshell blew up in the

face of newly elected George Bush, who was about to appoint Skinner to the

position of Transportation Secretary.65

Like most of the Machiavellians in the NutraSweet story, Samuel Knox Skinner

kept company with hardright Republicans. He entered politics as a campaign

volunteer for Barry Goldwater. 66 In 1975, he was appointed to Federal

Prosecutor in Chicago by President Ford. Sidley & Austin promoted him to senior

partner after only one year with the firm. Skinner was the director of George

Bush's presidential campaign in Illinois. On occasion he was berated for his

involvement with the state's Republican apparatus: In 1987, for instance, the

Chicago SunTimes linked him with a clutch of lawyers close to Governor Thompson,

who were awarded lucrative assignments handling the affairs of financially

crippled insurance companies. Skinner was a leading light of the Illinois Fraud

Prevention Commission -he targeted welfare cheats (as opposed to white-collar

criminals in the drug industry)-and President Reagan's Commission on Organized

Crime. In December 1991, he left Transportation to take the position of

President Bush's Chief of Staff.67

" A Shocking Story "

Had Skinner pressed on with the investigation, aspartame's manufacturer would

have been forced to explain a long history of fabricated laboratory tests and

slippery dealings with federal regulators, not to mention the public.

Dr. Alexander Schmidt, a former FDA commissioner, said of the original

Aspartame Task Force investigation: " What was discovered was reprehensible. .

..incredibly sloppy science. " A 1980 public board of inquiry opined that the

company's testing procedures were " bizarre. " 68

Searle's decision to market aspartame culminated with the falsification of

test results to obtain FDA approval . In November 1969, officials of the firm

hired Dr. Harry Waisman, a researcher for the University of Wisconsin, to test

for brain damage in rhesus monkeys. Seven monkeys were fed aspartame for periods

up to one year. In the end, though, the evaluation flopped because the

technicians failed to perform the intelligence tests and autopsies required to

determine brain damage. When questioned about the false data by the FDA, Searle

officials claimed to have had no direct control over the study. But the protocol

for the study was written by a Searle pathologist *after* it had begun. And,

according to Dr. Gross, " Frequent high-level communications took place between

Searle executives and Dr. Waisman prior to and during the study. " 69

To make matters worse, Dr. Waisman died in March, 1971, in mid-study.

Searle submitted the toxicity test to the FDA on October 12, 1972. It bore Dr.

Waisman's name as coauthor. Richard Merrill noted: " Dr. Waisman was the expert

in the field and his name would carry great weight, " but complained to Skinner

that Searle took " great literary license " in drafting the report, " which covers

up the admitted inadequacy of the design, control and documentation of this

study. " 70

Searle submitted some 150 test reports, yet Dr. Martha Freeman of the FDA

Bureau of Drugs noted in a 1973 memo, " the information provided is inadequate to

permit an evaluation of the potential toxicity of aspartame. " 71 The FDA task

force set up by Dr. Schmidt in 1975 reviewed 25 studies on seven products

manufactured by G.D. Searle, a total of 500 pages and 15,000 exhibits.72 Searle

was held to be the author of " reports that the FDA believes contain false

information " and " concealed facts resulting from having drafted Dr. Waisman's

'pilot' monkey study so that it would *appear* to be a valid, thorough

scientific study, " and not a forgery.

In 1975 Searle submitted a battery of cancer test results entitled " The

Willigan Report, which contained a statistical table that excluded four

malignant mammary tumors detected by Dr. Willigan and incorporated in his data.

The malignancies were made to appear benign. Searle dismissed the

misrepresentation as a computer " programming error " undetected by supervising

statisticians. Dr. Gross interviewed all concerned with the tests. He concluded

in a statement to Metzenbaum's committee in August, 1985, that " to accept the

Searle explanation is to believe that the unfavorable mammary malignancy data

were innocently omitted from the summary table four separate times by three

different individuals. " 74

The Waisman and Willigan Reports were prepared by Searle Labs, as were 88% of

the safety evaluations conducted by 1981.75 They are typical of the shoddy

documentation upon which FDA Commissioner Hayes based his decision that

aspartame does not constitute a public health risk. Although two members of the

1975 task force considered the tests to be criminal frauds, Hayes and Searle

declared the results valid. In an appeal to Hayes' decision, James Turner said:

" The entire argument that since the studies are no longer considered fraudulent

by FDA they are therefore scientifically valid is an example of a rhetorical

shell game that, if successful, can only bring discredit and ridicule on the

FDA. " 76

Dr. Gross, the chief scientist on the FDA task force, told the CBS Nightly

News staff in January, 1984, that Searle made " deliberate decisions " to cloak

the toxic effects of aspartame. " They took great pains to camouflage these

shortcomings of the study,'' Gross said, " as I say, filter and just present to

the FDA what they wished the FDA to know. And they did other terrible things.

For instance, animals would develop tumors while they were under study-well,

G.D. Searle would remove these tumors from the animals, " surgically masking the

cancerous effects of aspartame.77 Yet one 1986 New England Journal of Medicine

article claimed that noncompulsive aspartame intake has " no sinister effects. "

Dr. Woodrow Monte told CBS, " Every time a truly impartial team of scientists

have looked at NutraSweet, it has been turned down. " Dr. Monte, director of the

nutrition laboratory at Arizona State University, held that these studies " show

extreme dangers over the long term. " 78

Dr. Monte was rewarded for his comments by a fusillade from the press. On

February 23, Dan Dorfman, a business news reporter for WCBS in New York, broke a

story that several CBS employees had invested in options on NutraSweet that pay

off if the stock price drops.79 Dr. Monte and his attorney had purchased the

options as well. It emerged that the CBS staffers had purchased the options on

the advice of stock market newsletters printed prior to the nightly news report.

The investments were not illegal, nor did they reap a profit. Searle's stock was

not affected by the publicity, and the investors took a loss.

Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story condemning the

" inside trading. " Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media picked up the cudgel against

Dr. Monte and the CBS employees as if they'd committed a shocking Wall Street

swindle.80 Accuracy in Media, formed in 1969, is an intelligence operation

abetted by the CIA. The rabidly right-wing organization was co-founded by

Bernard Yoh, a counter-insurgency adviser under the notorious Edward Landsdale

in Vietnam, and a fount of CIA funds to military intelligence units in the Delta

region. Board member Elbridge Durbrow was once a foreign service " diplomat, " and

advised commanders of Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Another AIM board

member, Frank Trager, has conducted research for the Pentagon and CIA, and

churns out pamphlets on international business and intelligence operations.

Major financial contributors to AIM include Richard Nixon, " Bebe " Rebozo, Edward

Scripps, the wretched Dr. Edward Teller and former Treasury Secretary William E.

Simon.81

Accuracy in Media is a strident advocate of the chemical industry, which

provides it with generous funding. The media " watchdog " has long waged a

campaign on behalf of dioxin, denouncing the " Agent Orange scare " as the

creation of delirious, anti-business liberals. Among the leading manufacturers

of Agent Orange for the Vietnam war effort was Monsanto, preparing-at the very

moment AIM took aim at detractors of NutraSweet[TM]- to buy G.D. Searle.

The Good Stuff

Dr. Monte cautioned in 1987 that he didn't want to sound like a " conspiracy

theory " hound, but the aspartame chronology clarifies its commercial emergence.

The FDA Board of Inquiry advised against the sweetener on September 30, 1980. On

January21, 1981-the day after Reagan's inauguration-Searle submitted " ten new

studies. " Dr. Monte was skeptical. " It is impossib1e that they could have

conducted those studies in four months, " he said. " Obviously they'd previously

done those studies but hadn't officially submitted them, although much of the

information in those studies was informally presented to the board of inquiry. "

With the " new tests " in hand, Hayes acted as though critical, overriding

evidence had proven the safety of aspartame.82

James Turner, representing thc Community Nutrition Institute in Washington,

D.C., said that Arthur Hull Hayes, to arrive at his decision that aspartame is

safe, firewalked apath " through a mass of scientific mismanagement, improper

procedures, wrong conclusions and general scientific inexactness. " Two FDA

officials declared in 1985 that Hayes was determined to clear all obstacles to

NutraSweet approval. One FDA bureaucrat reported that " people at the top " were

closed to questions concerning the quality of the tests submitted by Searle.83

In July, 1984 a broad investigation of NutraSweet's adverse effects was

conducted by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control. Federal health

officials said at the outset that they believed no harm would emerge from the

data to indict aspartame. Robert McQuate, Ph.D., science director of the

National Soft Drink Association, predicted with mystical confidence that the

study would " provide further evidence that aspartame is a safe ingredient. " 84

Dr. McQuate didn't fret the goring of his biochemical ox. In November the CDC

announced that no " serious, widespread " side effects had been found.85 It was

" unlikely, " said CDC officials, that " complainers " could establish a link

between NutraSweet and their maladies-the same bromide once tossed to victims of

radiation experiments. The reported side-effects of aspartame fell into two

distinct categories: central nervous system (65%) and gastrointestinal disorders

(24%).86 Yet the CDC claimed erroneously that no consistent reaction pattern had

been found. 87 Robert Shapiro, then president of Nutrasweet, used the occasion

to enthuse that the survey " clearly established the safety " of the sugar

substitute.88 Nevertheless, the CDC recommended a new set of studies because

aspartame users continued to complain of ill effects.

Based on the ersatz assurances of the CDC report, PepsiCo announced that it

would drop saccharine and begin sweetening its diet drinks entirely with

aspartame. The decision would have been approved by Wayne Calloway, then CEO of

PepsiCo and director of the multinationals Citicorp, General Electric and Exxon.

In 1983 soda bottlers, organized around Pepsi had petitioned the FDA for a delay

in approval of NutraSweet for soft drinks until further evaluation verified its

safety-interpreted by market analysts as a ploy to drive down the price of the

sweetener. They soon abandoned the effort to block approval (and all health

concerns they might have had). " We believe saccharine is safe, " Pepsi USA

President Roger Enrico lied, but " we wanted the taste improvement. " PepsiCo,

already drawing on a tenth of Searle's 7.5 million pound annual production of

aspartame, signed an agreement with G.D. Searle to boost purchases 500

percent.89 (Like other corporate pushers of aspartame, Pepsi has long maintained

ties to the intelligence community. One product of the relationship was a Pepsi

plant in Vientiane, Laos with a laboratory outfitted for heroin production.

Alfred McCoy, in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia documents the efforts

of Richard Nixon to promote the plant's construction in 1965, and the CIA's

continuing subsidization of the plant. McCoy complained to Pepsi officials that

the facilities were but a cover for the importation and refinement of morphine,

but it continued to operate unhindered.)

Yet another report was filed by Reagan's General Accounting Office in July

1987, this one on the FDA's handling of aspartame. The GAO concluded that the

agency had followed proper procedures and conducted valid studies. But the

report noted that the FDA had followed guidelines for food -not drug- testing,

despite the recommendation of the agency's own biologists favoring drug tests,

which are considerably more stringent. This recommendation was overruled by FDA

officials.90

Another blemish in the study was bared by Dr. Louis Elsas, director of medical

genetics at Emory University in Atlanta. " They never asked the right questions

about what it does to brain function in humans, " he told the Washington Post.

Half of the scientists polled expressed reservations about the safety of

NutraSweet. One-fifth reported " major concerns. " Monsanto quibbled in a press

release that these critics had themselves never conducted aspartame research. A

score of independent scientists have. They found side effects.

Senator Metzenbaum berated Searle's flawed and fabricated tests at the August

1, 1985 Senate hearings. " The FDA, " he said, " is content to have the

manufacturer of aspartame, G.D. Searle, conduct these studies. How absurd. "

He also faulted the AMA:

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a report on

aspartame which, with some significant disclaimers, stated it was safe for most

people. I wish that this report could ease my concerns. It does not. It merely

restates the FDA position which relies solely on the tests conducted by G.D.

Searle. As I have indicated these tests are under a cloud. In addition, the

concerns raised recently by the scientists ... were not even included in the

report.

In defense of the tests, executives of G.D. Searle argued that the sweetener

has been approved by foreign regulatory agencies and the World Health

Organization. But H.J. Roberts, an internal medicine specialist in West Palm

Beach, Florida, reviewed the foreign studies and found that " the vast majority

of these agencies accepted company-sponsored research without ever having done

independent confirmatory studies.''91

Deficiencies in testing were aggravated by a lack of laboratory training at

Searle. One of the pivotal safety studies involved fetal damage, but the FDA

task force found that the medical researcher in charge was " inexperienced in

conducting studies of this nature and yet given full responsibility. " They were

appalled to discover that his sole credential was a field study of the

cottontail rabbit for the Illinois Wildlife Service, yet at Searle he'd been

assigned to laboratory training and supervision. When asked about his curriculum

vitae in fetal research, he replied that he'd once attended a seminar on the

subject, and the company had provided him with a stack of reference works.92

(Yet J.D. Searle, in its 1981 Annual Report, billed itself as " a research based

pharmaceutical company. " )

Corporate control of NutraSweet testing continues at Monsanto, torturing the

ethics of academic medicine. In August 1987 the University of Illinois, a

recipient of Monsanto's largess, issued a study exonerating aspartame of causing

seizures in laboratory animals. Dave Hattan, a safety regulator for the FDA,

responded that the study only confirmed the need for testing on humans. At

independent labs, he insisted, aspartame provoked seizures.

Industrial support tends to contaminate test data. Dr. Elsas, in a 1988 letter

to the New England Journal of Medicine, advocates unbiased review of clinical

research. " The NutraSweet Co., " he said, " may have had an interest in protocols

that would find that their product had no untoward effects. " 94 Monsanto

reportedly granted one NutraSweet researcher a $1.3 million honorarium.95 The

same hired gun willing to manipulate lab results will have no qualms publicly

defending a tainted pharmaceutical, like the diabetic specialist who objected

that a Senate hearing on aspartame, which called him as a witness, might arouse

groundless public anxiety.96

Victims and health activists have attempted in the courts to put a stop to the

marketing of NutraSweet, to no avail. In 1985 a coalition of consumer groups

were handed a ruling by the federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of

Columbia that the FDA had followed proper procedures in approving aspartame for

soft drinks. A year later the Washington Post reported that the Supreme Court

again refused to consider the case " despite critics' arguments that the product,

sold under the brand name NutraSweet, may cause brain damage. " 97

Likewise, the medical establishment has thrown up an impenetrable wall to

aspartame critics. Dr. Roberts, author of a brief study, " Aspartame-Associated

Confusion and Memory Loss: A Possible Human Model for Early Alzheimer's

Disease, " found it impossible to publish the article in a peer review medical

journal. This was peculiar, he thought, " considering the increasing magnitude of

Alzheimer's disease, and the relevance of my observations to newer biochemical

findings and avenues of research. " He can " personally vouch for the enormous

difficulty in getting published articles concerning reactions to aspartame

products, " a trend in censorship with " ominous overtones. " The options, Dr.

Roberts says, are " generally limited to 'burying' the findings in a

small-circulation journal (such as the bulletin of a county medical society),

reporting the results as a letter to the editor, or (unfortunately, most often)

discarding the project. " 98

Silence surrounds the most odious conspiracies.

 

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