{"id":339,"date":"2011-02-08T11:20:08","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T16:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/rumsfelds-legacy-aspartame-and-brain-cancer.html"},"modified":"2011-02-08T11:20:08","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T16:20:08","slug":"rumsfelds-legacy-aspartame-and-brain-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/rumsfelds-legacy-aspartame-and-brain-cancer.html","title":{"rendered":"Rumsfeld&#8217;s Legacy: Aspartame and brain cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ErngurkB3J0\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/dingo.care2.com\/pictures\/c2c\/share\/62\/628\/864\/628646_140.jpg\"><\/a>\nIn honor of Donald Rumsfeld&#8217;s memoir, here&#8217;s another part of his legacy:\nas president of G.D. Searle,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newswithviews.com\/NWVexclusive\/exclusive15.htm\">\nRumsfeld got the FDA to approve aspartame<\/a>\n(aka Nutra-sweet, Equal, or Canderel),\nshortly after Reagan was elected, despite massive evidence that it\ncaused cancer.\nDon&#8217;t believe me,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kn5slnNB8h0&#038;NR=1\">\nlisten to Mike Wallace:<\/a>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kn5slnNB8h0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>\nOr consider <a href=\"http:\/\/www.naturalnews.com\/026849_aspartame_health_Donald_Rumsfeld.html\">Hesh Goldstein&#8217;s opinion<\/a>:\n<blockquote>\n&#8220;If Donald Rumsfeld had never been born think of how many millions of\npeople the world over would not suffer headaches and dizziness. Thousands\nblind from the free methyl alcohol in aspartame would have sight,\nand there would be much fewer cases of optic neuritis and macular\ndegeneration. Millions suffering seizures would live normal lives and\nwouldn`t be taking anti-seizure medication that won&#8217;t work because\naspartame interacts with drugs and vaccines. Think of the runner, Flo\nJo, who drank Diet Coke and died of a grand mal seizure. She, no doubt,\nwould still be alive. Brain fog and memory loss, skyrocketing symptoms\nof aspartame disease, would not be epidemic.&#8221;\n<\/blockquote>\nWhat&#8217;s not opinion is that aspartame includes methyl acohol and other\ntoxic and carinogenic chemicals.\n<p>\nRumsfeld sold G.D. Searle to Monsanto in 1984\n\n<!--more-->\n(Monsanto sold off the aspartame business in 2000\nto Ajinomoto, the Japanese food processor that ran an aspartame rat\nstudy for the FDA head who approved aspartame).\nAccording to\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.laleva.cc\/food\/aspartame_2byrne02.html\">\nWelcome to the Spin Machine by Michael Manville<\/a>:\n<blockquote>\nIn 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held\nthe patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto\nwas apparently untroubled by aspartame&#8217;s clouded past, including a 1980\nFDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which\nconfirmed that it &#8220;might induce brain tumors.&#8221;\n<p>\nThe FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to\nhave Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (currently the Secretary of Defense)\nvow to &#8220;call in his markers,&#8221; to get it approved.\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fda.gov\/AboutFDA\/CommissionersPage\/PastCommissioners\/ucm113329.htm\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" border=0 src=\"http:\/\/www.fda.gov\/ucm\/groups\/fdagov-public\/documents\/image\/ucm063056.gif\"><\/a>\nOn January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan&#8217;s inauguration, Searle\nre-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener,\nand Reagan&#8217;s new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a\n5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry&#8217;s decision.\n<p>\nIt soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2\ndecision, but Hull then installed a sixth member on the commission,\nand the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie\nin aspartame&#8217;s favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of\nimpropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and\nthen took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations\nfirm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time he has never spoken\npublicly about aspartame.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd how did Hayes get to be head of the FDA?\nAccording to\n<a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=lN9uIMjTyi4C&#038;pg=PA66&#038;lpg=PA66&#038;dq=rumsfeld+reagan+transition+team&#038;source=bl&#038;ots=KliOb5kaRB&#038;sig=CKJ97s30Uuq-uxFWkPhk6TTEYIE&#038;hl=en&#038;ei=WGRRTdHOFcKztwf4q5DfCQ&#038;sa=X&#038;oi=book_result&#038;ct=result&#038;resnum=5&#038;ved=0CDIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&#038;q=rumsfeld reagan transition team&#038;f=false\">\nAndrew Cockburn in his book, Rumsfeld: his rise, fall, and catastrophic legacy<\/a>,\n<blockquote>\nRumsfeld himself had campaigned for Reagan in the general election.\nHe was on Reagan&#8217;s foreign and defense policy advisory committee.\nHis old friend Richard Allen was the new president&#8217;s national security adviser.\nMost important of all, John Robson, his right-hand man at Searle, was\non Reagan&#8217;s transition team.\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fda.gov\/AboutFDA\/CommissionersPage\/PastCommissioners\/ucm113340.htm\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" border=0 src=\"http:\/\/www.fda.gov\/ucm\/groups\/fdagov-public\/documents\/image\/ucm093644.gif\"><\/a>\nThe effects of the change in administrations were soon felt at the FDA.\nJere Goyan, FDA commissioner at the time, informed me how he was\n&#8220;fired &#8230; in early November by a phone call to my California home at two\na.m. California time by a very low-level member of the transition team\nwho said that my services were no longer needed.  It was the first time\nthat a commissioner had been fired because of a change in administration.\nI was told to write a letter of resignation and to vacate my office on\nthe day of the inauguration.&#8221;\n<p>\nOn January 21, 1981, one day after Reagan had taken the oath of office,\nSearle petitioned to have the inquiry panel&#8217;s verdict overruled.\nGoyan&#8217;s place was temporarily occupied by his deputy, who reportedly was\nanxious not to make waves with his new master.  Finally, in April, the\nadministration unveiled its very own FDA commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes.\n<p>\n&#8230;\n<p>\nOn July 18, 1981, in the first major regulatory action of his tenure,\nHayes approved aspartame for use as a sweetener in solid foods,\nthereby disregarding the inquiry verdict as well as yet another\ninternal study that raised alarms about the cancer risk.\n<\/blockquote>\nQuite a legacy.\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In honor of Donald Rumsfeld&#8217;s memoir, here&#8217;s another part of his legacy: as president of G.D. Searle, Rumsfeld got the FDA to approve aspartame (aka Nutra-sweet, Equal, or Canderel), shortly after Reagan was elected, despite massive evidence that it caused cancer. Don&#8217;t believe me, listen to Mike Wallace: Or consider Hesh Goldstein&#8217;s opinion: &#8220;If Donald [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1033,10,72,73],"tags":[1040,1035,380,1038,1034,1037,1039,1041,15,1036],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aspartame","category-history","category-safety","category-science","tag-arthur-hayes-hull","tag-aspartame-2","tag-cancer","tag-canderel","tag-donald-rumsfeld","tag-equal","tag-g-d-searle","tag-john-robson","tag-monsanto","tag-nutra-sweet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-5t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}