On September 30, 1980, the PBOI concluded that aspartame should not be approved, pending further investigation of its link to the formation of brain tumors and that the FDA "has not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive."
The coup
Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president January 21, 1981. Rumsfeld, while still CEO at Searle, was part of Reagan’s transition team. This team hand-picked Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., to be the new FDA commissioner. Dr. Hayes, a pharmacologist, had no previous experience with food additives before being appointed director of the FDA. He, like Rumsfeld, did, however, have experience with chemical warfare studies while connected to the Department of Defense. According to The Washington Post, Hayes was, "one of a number of doctors who conducted drugs tests for the Army on soldiers to determine the effect of a mind-disorienting drug called CAR 301,060," at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
The Post further explained why Hayes was the perfect choice to politically force the approval of aspartame: "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."
The report, detailing Hayes activities beginning in 1972, further indicated that Hayes was involved in similar biochemical mind control research studies until being named FDA director.
One of Hayes, first official acts as FDA chief was to approve the use of aspartame as an artificial sweetener in dry goods July 18, 1981. In order to accomplish this feat, Hayes had to overlook the scuttled grand jury investigation of Searle, overcome the Bressler Report, ignore the PBOI’s recommendations and pretend aspartame did not chronically sicken and kill thousands of lab animals. Hayes, left his post at the FDA in November, 1983, amid accusations that he was accepting corporate gifts for political favors. Just before leaving office in scandal, Hayes approved the use of aspartame in beverages. According to The Post, Hayes, next job was in the private sector where he served as a high-paid senior medical advisor for Searle’s public relations firm.
The aftermath
Within weeks of aspartame’s approval for use in beverages, cans of diet sodas and other sweet drinks were on the market. To help sell Americans on using the artificial sweetener, intense advertising campaigns began programming the public to believe that sugar has lots of calories; calories make us fat and NutraSweet has no calories-therefore it won’t make us fat.
Based upon this almost universally-accepted oversimplification of biochemical reality, aspartame has enjoyed 22 years of marketplace success and is now in an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 commonly-consumed products in at least 100 countries. When Searle was absorbed by Monsanto in 1985, Rumsfeld reportedly received a $12 million bonus.
Not surprisingly, the same adverse reactions seen in lab animals in the 60s and 70s are now being seen in the general population. In his first book on aspartame (1990), Dr. H.J. Roberts stated that in five or 10 years we would have a worldwide plague on our hands if we do not remove aspartame from our food supply. With the printing of "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic (2001), Dr. Roberts declared that the world is, indeed, plagued by a global epidemic of symptoms associated with aspartame use.
* Aspartame is being identified by a growing number of researchers and physicians as an underlying cause of chronic ill health in America and other countries throughout the world.
* It interacts with other substances such as pharmaceutical drugs to produce adverse reactions.
* All metabolites of aspartame (formaldehyde, methanol, diketopiperazine and formic acid) are toxic to the human body and are especially toxic to the brain.
* Aspartame comprises over 80 percent of consumer complaints filed with the FDA.
* The FDA has generated a list of 92 symptoms associated with aspartame consumption that include nausea, dizziness, irritability, insanity, blindness, deafness, weight gain and death.
* The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that 500,000 people each year simply "drop dead" for no apparent reason from what it labels "sudden cardiac death."
* Dementia among all ages (especially the elderly) and learning disabilities among children, in the U.S. and abroad, have been skyrocketing since 1981.
As of today, the number of scientific and studies showing that aspartame is, indeed, an underlying cause of chronic physical and mental illness and death outnumber studies proving its safety by at least 400 to zero. Proof of this fact can also be determined by what happens in many cases when people stop using aspartame: Their chronic symptoms disappear.
The legacy
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford-the highest civilian honor in America-on January 19, 1977. A few months later, Rumsfeld became the CEO of Searle to secure political approval for a product that science had proven to be a highly-addictive neurotoxic drug that causes chronic ill health, brain tumors and death. The evidence indicates that FDA approval for aspartame was a high-level political priority undoubtedly connected to its capacity to adversely effect the minds and bodies of those consuming it.
Because Rumsfeld placed politics above public health and safety, hundreds of millions of people throughout the world cannot think clearly and suffer from a variety of chronic illnesses. It is, therefore, fitting that symptoms associated with aspartame use be known as "Rumsfeld’s disease."
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