RUMMY, ASPARTAME & SWINE FLU

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RUMMY, ASPARTAME & SWINE FLU

 

FreeMarketNews.com

 

http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=2150

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/november2005/161105rummyflu.htm

 

 

 

By Anthony Wile

 

 

 

 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is not only a force in

launching the controversial flu remedy Tamiflu, he is also behind the

release of the increasingly criticized sweetener aspartame. In fact,

he's mentioned in a $350 million class action lawsuit filed by US

consumer group the National Justice League. According to a September

2005 Ecologist Magazine cover story, " Aspartame - the shocking story

of the world's bestselling sweetener " by health writer Pat Thomas, The

Ramizzini Institute in Bologna, a non-profit, private research

institution, recently released " the results of a very large, long-term

animal study into aspartame ingestion. Its study shows that aspartame

causes lymphomas and leukaemia in female animals fed aspartame at

doses around 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or around half

the accepted daily intake for humans. " Health problems linked to

aspartame reportedly include arthritis, brain cancer, memory loss,

hearing loss, hypertension, abdominal pain, headache and migraines.

 

 

 

 

How did Rumsfeld, better known these days for the windfall he has

reaped from the sudden popularity of the antiviral Tamiflu, get mixed

up with aspartame? It happened when he became the chief executive

officer of a worldwide pharmaceutical G.D. Searle & Company in 1977,

some 12 years after aspartame's discovery by G.D. Searle chemist James

Schlatter. A story by Rishi Mehta, associate commentary editor for the

University of Connecticut Daily Campus newspaper, points out the

following: " In 1981, after over 15 years of FDA disapproval of

aspartame, Rumsfeld said in a Searle sales meeting that he would use

`political rather than scientific means' to finally get FDA approval.

Only 20 days later, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as 40th President of

the United States, appointing Rumfeld as Special Envoy to the Middle

East and Arthur Hayes Hull Jr. - a friend of Rumsfeld's - to FDA

commissioner. "

 

 

 

 

The article adds, " Within one day, Rumsfeld and Searle reapplied to

Hull's FDA for approval of aspartame. A few months later Hayes

appointed a five-member committee to review whether or not aspartame

should be approved. When it became apparent there would be a 3-2

decision against approval of the substance, Hull appointed a sixth

person. Once the vote became deadlocked, Hayes took it upon himself to

make the tie-breaking vote, allowing aspartame to receive FDA

approval. Only three months later, Hayes resigned under controversy

only to shortly thereafter take a senior position with

Burston-Marsteller - a company which was the public relations firm for

Rumsfeld's Searle. "

 

 

 

One of the many problems with such apparent cronyism is that it taints

any government proposal having to do with health care or emergency

health powers. This is no hypothetical concern either. Late in October

2005 the " Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of

2005 " (S. 1873) was introduced in the Senate to " prepare and strengthen

the biodefenses of the United States against deliberate, accidental,

and natural outbreaks of illness, and for other purposes. " It

establishes the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency

(BARDA), as the focal point of a secret effort to develop vaccines and

other medical countermeasures, exempt from the Freedom of Information

Act and the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The National Vaccine

Information Center (NVIC) has called " a drug company stockholder's

dream and a consumer's worst nightmare. "

 

According to Canadian-based Global Research, " The proposed legislation

will strip Americans of the right to a trial by jury if harmed by an

experimental or licensed drug or vaccine that they are forced by

government to take, whenever federal health officials declare a public

health emergency. "

 

 

 

 

While Rumsfeld is not directly involved in the legislation, it

contains many of the defects associated with Rumsfeld's conflation of

private and public spheres as regards health care. This iteration,

perhaps the most radical yet, allows large pharmaceutical to operate

in secret with government researchers using " biodefense " research

funds to develop what may be questionable treatments for which they

will not be liable. Left alone, the private sector would develop

branding and testing agencies – and these entities would be on guard

against corruption which could sink their businesses. But by

commingling private health care initiatives with secret, emergency

biodefense developments, the government is making it impossible to

apply the competitive benefits of the marketplace or scientific

transparency. It is a recipe for the development of flawed treatment

regimes that may offer tragic consequences.

 

 

 

 

For precedent, ironically, it is not necessary to look any further

than Rumsfeld himself and his role in the little remembered 1970's

medical debacle of Swine Flu. According to Lisa Parsons in a review of

" Crab Wars: A Tale of Horseshoe Crabs, Bioterrorism, and Human

Health, " by William Sargent, 2002, University Press of New England:

" The Rumsfeld [connection to Swine Flu] starts in 1976, when a

military recruit in New Jersey died from a flu that experts speculated

might be the `swine flu' virus of 1918 pandemic fame. As Sargent tells

it, Rumsfeld, who was then and is again the nation's secretary of

defense, made the imminent `swine flu' a political issue to add some

spark to the campaign of President Ford, an interim leader without a

cause. At Rumsfeld's urging, the administration would ensure that

" every man, woman and child " was vaccinated. Huge amounts of vaccine

were produced and distributed quickly. "

 

 

Parsons adds, " Some batches were contaminated. This was in the days

before lysate. Six hundred people sickened and 52 died. The program

was stopped a month after the election. And nobody got swine flu. `It

was,' writes Sargent, `modern medicine's most flagrant

miscalculation.' Parsons also mentions Sargent's linkage between the

'76 swine flu scare and the more current discussion about a smallpox

vaccine. " `How will the United States protect itself against

bioterrorism?' [sargent] asks. `The Department of Defense proposes …

 

40 million new doses of smallpox vaccine.' Sargent is concerned about

the possibility of bacterial contamination in vaccines that are rushed

to market, and suggests that such contamination might have been behind

adverse reactions to the vaccine in the past. `[Rumsfeld] is one of

the architects of the present campaign.' "

 

 

 

According to Dr. Joseph Mercola at the Alliance for Human Research

Protection, observers of the Swine Flu debacle had far stronger

comments than Sargent's, as follows: " Ida Honorof [called it], `the

most brazen, obscene electioneering ploy' ever

 

… proposed by the President 'and his coterie of scientific hacks,

fabricated to cause pure unadulterated panic and guarantee political

capital, rammed through without consideration of people's health and

lives and approved by a band-wagon Congress' eager to make the

nation's `health' a bipartisan concern. "

 

staff reports - Free-Market News Network