ASPARTAME, ANTI-DEPRESSANTS AND BUSH

[Guest guest]

Aspartame, Anti-Depressants

And Bush

By Jerry Mazza

Online Journal

Contributing Writer

8-6-4

 

" When divine power plans evil for a man, it first injures his mind. " -

Sophocles

 

First we have Dr. Justin Frank, the prominent Washington psychiatrist

and author of the book, Bush on the Couch, Inside the Mind of the

President, characterizing George W. Bush as suffering from " character

pathology, " including " grandiosity " and " megalomania, " seeing

himself, America and God as interchangeable, a truly unholy trinity.

Now we have an article by Dr. Betty Martini, Political Sanity vs.

Neurotoxins: U.S. President [sic] Being Given Powerful Anti-

depressants which Interact with Aspartame, published in U.N. Observer

& International Report.

 

As Dr. Martini tells us, " The first correspondence I had with

President [sic] George Bush was when he was Governor of Texas. He was

about to sign into law the Dietetics Practice Act. At the time,

Monsanto owned NutraSweet and I explained that the dieticians were

Monsanto's media hacks and that his law granted them a monopoly,

which is against most state constitutions. (They passed it anyway). I

sent him a packet about aspartame, showing him that it is a deadly

chemical poison and the dietitians push it and defend the

manufacturer. He wrote back that he disagreed - and he also got

hooked on Diet Coke. "

 

It should be noted that Dr. Martini, while not a physician, has

worked in medicine for 22 years. She's best known as the founder of

Mission Possible International, which works with doctors worldwide to

remove aspartame from food, drinks and medicine. Dr. Martini reports

that 75 percent of all the complaints to the Food and Drug

Administration are about the ill effects of aspartame.

 

Concerning George Bush, Dr. Martini notes, " So far, the president

[sic] has exhibited memory loss to such an extent that the Atlanta

Journal Constitution published that he appeared to need to be coached

for each word. " She refers to that scene at the end of Fahrenheit

911, in which Bush attempts to quote an old saying, " Fool me once,

shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. " As Dr. Martini points

out, " he couldn't remember the end of it, so after saying, 'Fool me

once, shame on you, he looked around and thought and then said, 'And

don't do it again.' You could see he couldn't remember. " Dr. Martini

points out that Bush " has also had a blackout which is notorious of

aspartame and he complained of joint pain. Aspartame hardens the

synovial fluids and causes agonizing joint pain. "

 

This seems like a case of cruel but ironic justice, Bush signing a

bill for a drug that puts him in danger. But the danger goes far

beyond Bush's mental and physical health. As Dr. Martini says, " The

phenylalanine in aspartame at 50 percent is neurotoxic and goes

directly into the brain. " That is, anybody's brain who uses it: men,

women or children. " It lowers the seizure threshold and depletes

serotonin, " she adds, " and when you lower serotonin, it triggers

paranoia, manic depression or bi-polar brain disorder,

hallucinations, mood swings and suicidal tendencies. It also

interacts with all anti-depressants and you can get a double whammy

with some of these psycho drugs. "

 

In fact, the side effects of depression, paranoia, mood swings were

also noted in the article Sullen, Depressed President Retreats into

Private, Paranoid World, " by Capitol Hill Blue Editor Theresa Hampton

and William D. McTavish, a follow-up to Hamtpon's article, Bush Using

Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior. All in all, this

doesn't add up to a comforting picture of the most powerful

individual on earth, George W. Bush.

 

Only a few White House intimates, such as Karl Rove or Karen Hughes

get to speak with Bush; of cabinet members, the truly scary John

Ashcroft, fellow born-again, is the leading shoulder to lean on.

Can't you see them all sitting around a conference table drinking

Diet Coke and forgetting what the agenda was? Perhaps that's why we

lost most of our civil rights with the USA PATRIOT Act. They forgot

there was a Bill of Rights. Certainly it seems so in regard to not

funding the $26 billion " No Child Left Behind Act, " or Bush's

campaign promise not to engage in " nation building, " switching once

he seized office, as if to Diet Pepsi, to the hegemony of a " A New

World Order. " There are so many forgotten promises: to cut taxes for

working families, but the wealthiest ended up with the lion's share

of the current, budget-busting cuts. And there was the announcement

that the war in Iraq was over on May 1, 2003, though the death toll

keeps rising as the fighting rages on with no end in sight.

 

Perhaps the forgetting, the paranoia, the mood swings, the

depression, are infectious, above and beyond the aspartame or anti-

depressants. Perhaps that's the double whammy Dr. Martini was

referring to. After all, there we have the paragon of propriety, Dick

Cheney, hurling an expletive at a senator who challenged his no-bid

Iraq contracts to Halliburton, of which he was, and in a way, seems

to continue to be, CEO, or OOC (out of control). What's more, if we

have Ashcroft forgetting the entire Bill of Rights, what about W

forgetting the separation of church and state embodied in the First

Amendment.

 

In fact, we have an administration so paranoid it has given the least

number of press conferences in the history of television. And we have

a president [sic] whose first impulse was to reject a formal

investigation into 9/11. Not that the 9/11 whitewash has produced any

great revelations. That said, let's return to Dr. Martini, aspartame,

and another Bush stalwart, Donald Rumsfeld, and their impact on us

all.

 

Aspartame and Donald Rumsfeld

 

As reported on NewswithViews.com, May 9, 2004, " aspartame is a drug,

not just an additive, found in diet soft drinks and over 5,000 foods,

drugs and medicine. According to top doctors and researchers,

aspartame causes headache, memory loss, seizures, vision loss, coma

and cancer. It worsens or mimics the symptoms of such diseases and

conditions as fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, ADD, diabetes, Alzheimer's,

chronic fatigue and depression. " Relevant Bush and millions of other

drinkers and ex-drinkers, " Further dangers highlighted are that

aspartame liberates free methyl alcohol. The resulting chronic

methanol poisoning affects the dopamine system of the brain causing

addiction. "

 

Curiously, in George W. Bush's " Summary of Medical History August

4th, 2001, " when he was 55 years, old, the physician, Dr. Kenneth

Cooper notes in the President's [sic] Social History:

 

" Tobacco: An occasional cigar.

 

" Alcohol: None.

 

" Caffeine: Diet sodas and coffee. "

 

The abundant use of diet drinks can function as a kind of replacement

addiction, with some of the equally dangerous side effects mentioned

earlier. Now if aspartame is so dangerous, how did it ever go public?

That's a matter of profit and Republican politics.

 

Aspartame was discovered in 1965, bringing with it a raging debate

over the sugar substitute's health risks. From lab testing on rats,

it was learned the drug induced brain tumors. On Sept. 30, 1980, the

FDA Board of Inquiry agreed and denied the petition for approval. In

1981, as the Reagan era cranked up, Arthur Hull Hayes, the new FDA

Commissioner ignored the ruling and approved aspartame for dry goods.

As noted in the 1985 Congressional Record, then CEO of Searle

Laboratories, Donald Rumsfeld, said that he would " call in his

markers " to get the drug approved. Rummy was then on President

Reagan's transition team. A day after he took office, he appointed

Hayes.

 

As Dr. Martini tells us, " When Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle,

that conglomerate manufactured aspartame. For 16 years the FDA

refused to approve it, not only because it's not safe, but also

because they wanted the company indicted for fraud. Both U.S.

prosecutors hired on with the defense team and the statue of

limitations expired. They were Sam Skinner and William Conlon.

Skinner went on to become Secretary of Transportation, squelching the

cries of the pilots who were having seizures on this seizure-

triggering drug, aspartame, and then Chief of Staff under President

[sic] Bush's father ... Even Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is

a former Monsanto attorney. (Monsanto bought Searle in 1985, and sold

it a few years ago). When Ashcroft became attorney general, Thompson

from King and Spalding Attorneys (another former Monsanto attorney)

became deputy under Ashcroft (attorneys for Nutra Sweet and Coke).

 

" However, the FDA still refused to allow Nutra Sweet on the

market ... It interacts with all antidepressants, L-dopa, Coumadin,

hormones, insulin, all cardiac medication, and many others. It also

is a chemical hyper sensitization drug so that it interacts with

vaccines, other toxins, other unsafe sweeteners like Splenda, which

has a chlorinated base like DDT and cause autoimmune disease. ...

Despite the fact that the FDA has known this for a quarter of a

century and done nothing even though it's against the law ... Searle

went on to build a Nutra Sweet factory and had $9 million worth of

inventory. "

 

Rumsfeld, as Dr. Martini pointed out, was on Reagan's transition

team. And the day after Reagan took office, he selected FDA

Commissioner Arthur Hayes to approve aspartame. Despite the FDA

setting up a Board of Inquiry of top scientists, who pointed out the

drug's dangers and revoked the approval, Hayes overruled the board

and then went to work for the manufacturer's PR agency, Burson-

Marstellar. He's never spoken to the press since.

 

Despite three congressional hearings, a general outcry of " poison, "

Senator Orrin Hatch, also paid by Monsanto, made sure that Senator

Howard Metzenbaum's bill, calling for independent studies of

aspartame's toxic effects, never got out of committee. The bill, S.

1557, also would have put a moratorium on the drug. The further

studies of its effects on the population would have looked at

interaction with drugs, seizures, fetus health, and even behavioral

problems in children, due to the depletion of serotonin caused by the

phenylalanine in aspartame.

 

According to an April 26 news release from the National Justice

League, lawsuits were filed in three California courts against a

dozen companies that produce or use aspartame as a sugar substitute

in their products. The companies included Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Bayer

Corp., the Dannon Company, William Wrigley Jr. Company, Wal-Mart,

ConAgra Foods, Wyeth, Inc., The NutraSweet Company, and Altria Corp.

(parent company of Kraft Food and Phillip Morris).

 

Dr. Martini recommends that consumers read all labels on any food,

medicine or drinks they intend to consume. That might be great advice

for a president [sic] struggling to maintain his own clarity if not

his office. One wishes those who voted for Bush had read his label,

to find out just how deadly he could be, and will be, if elected this

time.

 

- Jerry Mazza is a free-lance writer who resides in New York City. He

can be reached at gvmaz

 

1998-2004 Online Journalô. All rights reserved.

http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/080604Mazza/080604mazza.html