START TIME: 2:21.01


Note: music playing in the background while CORI BRACKETT (CB), the narrator, makes introduction.

IN 2:52.00 CB speaks

CB: How many people do you know these days with a neurological disorder?
How many family members or people in your circle of friends have something like multiple sclerosis or chronic headaches? How about a brain tumor? Studies
in the New England Journal of Medicine show a growing trend in the rate of such disorders in recent years. Perhaps, like me, you have never given the issue much thought, but in 2002 I could no longer ignore it. I also became a statistic when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Note: music continues playing although CB has paused.

CB (Cont.): It was the summer of the great fire in Tucson, Arizona when I began my research and traveled across this country to find the truth.

OUT 3:29.03 CB stops talking.

IN 3:31.06 TITLE CARD “SWEET MISERY” comes up

IN 3:33.04 TITLE BELOW SWEET MISERY “A Poisoned World” comes up


Note: music slowly fades out and Cori starts having a conversation with DR. RUSSELL BLAYLOCK, board-certified neurosurgeon, (Dr. RB).

OUT 3:36.21 TITLE CARD “SWEET MISERY”

OUT 3:36.21 TITLE BELOW SWEET MISERY “A Poisoned World”

IN 3:37.10 CB speaks

CB: Let’s talk a little about that or is that true or is that….

IN 3:40.18 Dr. RB speaks

Dr. RB: Well yeah. The, you know the technology we have when looking
at the brain has changed rather dramatically. Now the increase in brain tumors has nothing to do with our ability to see these things cause that’s been looked at --

IN 3:54.05 Dr. RB TITLE CARD: “Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.
Board-Certified Neurosurgeon”

Dr. RB (Cont.): -- and the studies have shown that it’s a real increase in brain
tumors. It has nothing to do with our –

OUT 3:59.01 Dr. RB TITLE CARD

Dr. RB (Cont.): -- improvements to technology.

Note: music begins to play in background.

IN 4:00.16 Cori begins speaking.

CB: The National Cancer Institute recorded an impressive increase in incident
rates of primary brain cancer since 1985 and possibly as early as 1984.
Dr. H.J. Roberts, Director for the Palm Beach Institute for Medical
Research found this trend particularly disturbing. At a time when this trend
was singularly attributed to more innovative scanning and diagnostic
procedures, Roberts noticed a series of conflicting themes. First, adequate
brain scanning devices were widely available for at least ten years prior to
this report. Second, there were simply more people affected with brain
cancer. They had nothing to do with the change in the way they were
diagnosed or a different way of classifying the disease. Third, between
1983 and 1987 incidents of other forms of cancer outside the brain remained
the same and in some cases declined. So, why the vast increase in brain
cancer and brain disorders since 1984. I’ll refer to a published study by
foremost neuroscientist Dr. John Olney. He suggests one likely candidate.
In 1983 the US population began ingesting significant quantities of a
substance never before used for human consumption. Artificial sweetener
aspartame was quickly introduced to consumers. In 1984--

IN 5:30.13 6,900,00 lbs. comes on screen

CB (Cont): --6,900,000 pounds of aspartame was consumed by Americans. This rate –

IN 5:35.28 14,400,00 lbs. is added to screen

CB: (Cont.): -- doubles by the next year and continues to climb into the 90’s.

OUT 5:40.17 text of “6,900,00 lbs.” and “14,400,000 lbs.”goess off screen

Note: music in background fades out. DR. JIM BOWEN (Dr. JB) speaks:

IN 5:40.28 Dr. JB begins speaking

Dr. JB: When it was fully marketed for pop and everything by –

IN 5:44.05 Dr. JB TITLE CARD: “ Jim Bowen, M.D.
Emphasis: Biochemistry”


Dr. JB (Cont.) -- uh…. July or August of 1983, six months later--

OUT 5:49.09 Dr. JB TITLE CARD

Dr. JB (Cont.): -- by 1984 the brain tumor rate had already jumped up 10% in the United
States. The… diabetes rate had jumped 30% and…. the incidents of brain
Lymphoma - a very aggressive and unusual type of brain tumor jumped
60%.

IN 6:05.20 DR. HJ ROBERTS (Dr. HJR) speaks

Dr. HJR: The uh…enormity of the problem is indicated--

IN 6:08.09 Dr. HJ TITLE CARD: “H.J. Roberts, M.D.
Board-Certified Internist”
Dr. HJR (Cont.) (pause) by fact that by 1988 in its own publication—

OUT 6:15.15 Dr. HJR TITLE CARD

Dr. HJR (Cont): --80% of complaints about food and additives uh… that were
volunteered to the FDA and again it didn’t have to be submitted had to
do with aspartame products, over 80%.

Note: music plays

IN 6:31.23 TITLE CARD “Silent Killer”

OUT 6:37.27 TITLE CARD “Silent Killer”


IN 6:38.08 Dr. RB begins speaking

Dr. RB: You know when you see these people uh… who say “Well you know I
take MSG or NutraSweet and it doesn’t seem to bother me at all.” They are more resistant to the obvious toxic effects but they’re still getting very subtle toxic effects that over many years is going uh…to produce obvious uh… disease in those persons.

IN 6:57.22 Dr. HJR begins speaking

Dr. HJR: Some persons can be exposed to it for the first time and break out in a rash and have terrible headaches and so they presumably, they’ve never been exposed to it before. Umm… (He clears his throat) but on the other hand, people who have taken it over long term and then exposed the body to uh… large doses of the components of aspartame. That’s uh in the realm of toxicity.

IN 7:27.02 Dr. RB begins speaking

Dr. RB: And then again it, it’s this variability in your sensitivity to toxins. Some people may notice very little of anything. A majority of people will have one of a number of symptoms. Because we know that the aspartame, because it is a poison that affects protein synthesis, because it affects how the synapse operates in the brain, and because it affects DNA, can affect numerous organs, so you can get a lot of different symptoms that seem unconnected. But in looking at the list of symptoms submitted to the FDA, most of them are neurological or in some way connected to the nervous system. Umm... so the nervous system seems to be one of the areas that is most affected. So we see people have difficulty thinking. Uh... they feel like they’re walking around in a cloud or a fog.

IN 8:18.03 ARTHUR EVANGELISTA (AE), former FDA Investigator, speaks:

AE: It’s a sub-chronic level. It’s not like you go out and you drink a bottle of methanol, and you have this acute reaction to it. --

IN: 8:24.15 AE TITLE CARD “Arthur Evangelista
Former FDA Investigator”

AE (Cont.): --Uh... what we’re having, what we’re seeing over a period of time is this
slow accumulation of toxins—

OUT 8:31.21 AE TITLE CARD

AE (Cont.): --within the body that have, that started disrupt
the, the umm… the normal activity of the brain and the endocrine system
which is controlled by the… by the brain itself.

IN 8:42.29 Psychiatrist DR. RALPH WALTON (Dr. RW) speaks

Dr. R.W. We know - we’ve known for a long time

IN 8:44.22 Dr. RW TITLE CARD: “Dr. Ralph S. Walton
Psychiatrist”

Dr. R.W. (Cont.): that when you take in a lot of aspartame in conjunction with carbohydrates you will decrease the availability of uh…

OUT 8:52.11 Dr. RW TITLE CARD “Dr. Ralph S. Walton
Psychiatrist”

Dr. R.W. (Cont.): L-tryptophan which is the building block for serotonin. There’s been a lot of media attention recently to serotonin: a very, very important neurotransmitter, important in mood regulation and a variety of functions.


IN 9:06.02 Dr. HJR speaks

Dr. HJR: Uh.. aspartame is uh... an artificial sweetener, an additive and it’s a chemical. It’s not a natural product, it’s a chemical. The, the…

IN 9:16.21 TITLE CARD “Aspartame”

Dr. HJR (Cont.): -- molecule is made up of three components. Two are amino acids, the so called building blocks of protein.—

OUT 09:25.08 TITLE CARD “Aspartame”

Dr. HJR (Cont.)--One is called--

IN 09:25.08 TITLE CARD “Phenylalanine”

Dr. HJR (Cont.):--phenylalanine which is about 50% of the molecule and--

OUT 09:31.11 TITLE CARD “Phenylalanine”
IN 09:31.11 TITLE CARD “Aspartic Acid”

Dr. HJR (Cont.): --the other is aspartic acid which is like 40%,--

OUT 09:36.03 TITLE CARD “Aspartic Acid”

Dr. HJR (Cont.): --and the other—

IN 09:36.03 TITLE CARD “Methyl Ester”

Dr. HJR (Cont.): -- 10% is, is so called methyl ester which as soon as it’s swallowed,
becomes free methyl—


OUT 09:44.05 TITLE CARD “Methyl Ester”

Dr. HJR (Cont.): -- alcohol, methanol, wood alcohol which is a poison, a real poison.

Music plays.

IN: 09:54.27 TITLE CARD: “Cause and Effect”

OUT: 09:58.12 TITLE CARD “Cause and Effect”



IN 09:59.16 Dr. HJR continues speaking

Dr. HJR
(Cont.): Uh… I realized that something was going awry, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. And then after several years of putting - amalgamating - this experience and patient input. It’s very important that you listen to your patients because the greater Dr. Osler said listen to the patient, they tell you what’s wrong. I realized that the common denominator was the use of uh… aspartame products. And under various trade names, particularly NutraSweet, Equal, Crystal Light, and so forth.



IN 10:42.24 LORENA MURRAY (LM) speaks:

LM: I mean there just were all kinds of things, that, you know… the Diet soda’s, the, you know.. I used to drink... eat Yello all the time, you know cool whip and gum, I used to, you know, eat chewing gum constantly back then, eh….



In 10:54.21 ED JOHNSON (EJ) speaks:

EJ: And so for years I went on thinking what a smart person I am drinking Diet Coke instead of regular Coke. And, and and.. also I carried into other things as well so that would I sweeten my tea, I sweeten it .uh..with Equal.


IN 11:11.07 Dr. Jim Bowen, M.D. (Dr. JB) speaks:

Dr. JB: And so when the, uh.. low cal cool aid hit the market in.. I think it was April 1983, I started… using it.


IN 11:23.16 LORENA MURRAY (LM) speaks:

LM: I start out for…during blood drives and I… um... I did the blood drives. I liked talking and everything, so that was a good area for me to get into.

IN 11:31.28 LM TITLE CARD: “Lorena Murray, Emergency Worker”

LM (Cont.): I was always hyper and all that. And I would drink the Diet soda’s like crazy there because we had it --

OUT 11:37.05 LM TITLE CARD “Lorena Murray, Emergency Worker”

LM (Cont.): -- at our disposal all the time. And so the further and further I got on and then I did the armed forces emergency services with the disaster we worked with uh… people overseas during war time.

In 11:48.25 ED JOHNSON (EJ) speaks:

EJ: Uh, I was a briefing attorney for a federal district judge, John H. Wood, the US court house in San Antonio is named after him.

IN 11:57.04 EJ TITLE CARD: “Ed Johson, Attorney”

EJ (Cont.): And uh… then after serving as his briefing attorney for two years,--

OUT 12:02.13 EJ TITLE CARD

EJ (Cont.): -I was appointed by Bill Sechens as assistant US attorney for the Western District of Texas. And…uh… served in that capacity for a little bit over four years and during that time I was the president of the Federal bar association and very active in uh ...legal matters and things like that.

IN 12:20.27 Dr. Jim Bowen, M.D. (Dr. JB) speaks:

Dr. JB: Had I seen the chemical formula on those products I would never touched it. The poisonous effect of methyl alcohol and its methyl esters are well known. And within a day or two of my starting to drink not only did I feel the deterioration in my body where I couldn’t swim anymore and I didn’t have the balance that I had and a I was short of breath from a heart failure type of problem, but my wife saw all this much more objectively than I did and she was a nurse and she said: Jim get off of this, this is killing you, it’s destroying you.


IN 12:55.22 LORENA MURRAY (LM) speaks:

LM: I have had something since 1983. I can go back to as far back as 1983 and possibly even before that but I only remember doctor’s offices and… and you know… the hospitalizations and things like that since 1983. Also, the vision, uh…having spots. And I couldn’t see and I, I, I literally stopped driving because I did not feel comfortable behind the wheel.


IN 13:18.28 ED JOHNSON (EJ) speaks:

EJ: I had been having double vision and my doctor scheduled me to have an MRI, and uh, we were waiting on the results and I’ll never forget it, it was oh, maybe a week or two before Christmas. And uh, the Doctor called and I was just ready to hear: well, you know, we couldn’t find anything. Well, instead he said: you have a brain tumor, and is a rather large brain tumor.

IN 13:42.03 Dr. Jim Bowen, M.D. (Dr. JB) speaks:

Dr. JB: And within a couple of days, I‘d gone from being two mile a day swimmer to having such a toxic cardio miopathy (??) that I’d hardly climbed the stairs to my apartment. Over the next six weeks I went through all of the personal hells of …methyl (??) alcohol poisoning and neuro transmitter depletion from, uh, the aspartame’s phenylalanine content and eventually ended up with a picture of Lou Gherig disease.

IN 14:09.26 LORENA MURRAY (LM) speaks:

LM: Well… detail is very, very important, you have to get spellings name, birthdates name, everything. And with me being diagnosed with Denoral hearing loss, which has gotten significantly worse within…I have been, uhm, checked the last three years every six months and it’s gotting… gotten a lot worse and now I taking.. I have the two hearing aids that I have to have.


IN 14:29.23 ED JOHNSON (EJ) speaks:


EJ: The doctor explained that one of the very probable side results would a loss of short term memory. Well...uh.. I later learned that it had done a little bit more than with me, uh…in that it ruined my legal career.

IN 14:43.28 Dr. Jim Bowen, M.D. (Dr. JB) speaks:

Dr. JB: About then I tumbled, but only sub-consciously, I said, well, you know I , I am just going get off this artificial sweetener and I, I didn’t really even consciously suspect NutraSweet, but… when I got off it then I started recovering.

IN 15:00.27 LORENA MURRAY (LM) speaks:

LM: I was asking everybody, what’s in this bottle? What’s aspartame? And, you know everybody said they had no idea. Uh… and than that one lady had… she said: o.k. all right, I have heard of it, she said. And something kept flashing my mind and I remembered seeing the name somewhere.


IN 15:13.28 ED JOHNSON (EJ) speaks:

EJ: Because I was such a high user of aspartame through primarily Diet Cokes and Equal and…uh… those, those are primary ways, combined with the mountain of evidence and, and other testimonials of people who have… have had terrible symptoms of every type of malady that you can imagine and when they are removed from the aspartame, the symptoms go away. That is what you call strong… if not direct evidence, very strong circumstantial evidence.


IN 15:50.17 LORENA MURRAY (LM) speaks:

LM: And I went in and pulled it up on the computer, at that time I didn’t have a computer, and I had never searched anything in my life. I have no clue, I know how to e-mail and that’s about it. And, uh… and I pulled up aspartame ….and… I just… my eyes lit up, I started crying, I was… all those symptoms, the 92 symptoms, I think, I think I counted 79 of those symptoms I have been in the hospital or to the doctor’s and complaints over fifty times for each one of them, well over…

In 16:18.03 ED JOHNSON (EJ) speaks:

EJ: Judge Wood, the judge I used to work for, the Federal judge,… ehuh… in his charts to the jury, when he would give a definition of circumstantial evidence, he would say:”If, as you go to bed at night, there is no snow on the ground and you wake up in the morning and there is snow on the ground, you may reasonably assume that during the course of the night it snowed”. That is an example of circumst…strong circumstantial evidence. You didn’t see it snow, you can’t… ehuh…scientifically prove that the snow fell from the sky, but it wasn’t there at night and in the morning it was, therefore you may conclude, circumstantially, that it snowed during the course of the night. And I would say that the evidence of, of, of my brain tumors being caused by aspartame are, are that strong to me.

IN 17:09.23 DR. HJ ROBERTS (Dr. HJR) speaks:

Dr. HJR: And then they re-challenged themselves knowingly—

IN: 17:14.03 Dr. HJR TITLE CARD: “Dr. H.J. Roberts
Board-Certified Internist”

Dr. HJR (Cont.):--or inadvertently. They were served something at a neighbor’s house which they didn’t realize contained an aspartame product.--—

OUT: 17:21.07 Dr. HJR TITLE CARD “Dr. H.J. Roberts
Board-Certified Internist”

Dr. HJR (Cont.): --And these set of symptoms and problems promptly recur within hours or a day or two. Sometimes within minutes and does so repeatedly. Then that is more than anecdotal. Many of these individuals who have been aspartame reactors have tested themselves 5, 10, 20 times. Every time getting the same response, and then they realize that this was a legitimate cause and effect relationship.

IN 17:56.24 Dr. JB speaks

Dr. JB: My, my personal experience - from my own experience and with patients - is that when somebody who has been poisoned by this goes off of it, they very quickly notice an improvement. And they almost equally quickly find out that it isn’t over yet. (laughing) They’ve got a lot of problems to deal with, --

IN 18:13.20 Dr. JB TITLE CARD: “Jim Bowen, M.D.
Emphasis: Biochemistry”

Dr. JB (Cont.):--and certainly because I had to suffer with this and had patient groups that had to suffer with it. --

OUT 18:18.24 Dr. JB TITLE CARD “Jim Bowen, M.D.
Emphasis: Biochemistry”

Dr. JB (Cont.):--And then, I would consult with doctors around the nation who were pretty much expert in the field of environmental ecology, I developed some therapeutic outlooks that people can have to uh… help themselves. But the, the first thing you’ve got to learn is to listen to your body. If something is going wrong try and back track to what you had or what you’re breathing in your environment or what’s going on around you.

Music plays.

IN 18:41.22 TITLE CARD: “Most Studied Substance”

OUT: 18:46.22 TITLE CARD “Most Studied Substance”



IN 18:48.12 ROBERT SHAPIRO (RS) begins to speak

RS: But the fact is this thing has been carefully studied,--

IN 18:50.20 RS TITLE CARD: “Robert Shapiro
Searle President 1984”

RS (Cont.): -- repeatedly studied, extensively studied, so that as I had said before, the FDA concluded it’s one of the most thoroughly tested food additives they’ve ever seen. And the conclusion is that it’s safe.

OUT 19:01.29 RS TITLE CARD “Robert Shapiro
Searle President 1984”

IN 19:01.29 Dr. RW speaks

Dr. RW: They had made the claim years ago that they would help and support any legitimate researcher,--

IN 19:08.04 RW TITLE CARD: “Dr. Ralph S. Walton
Psychiatrist”

Dr. RW (Cont): --that they would supply aspartame and be helpful in any research.--

OUT 19:15.08 RW TITLE CARD “Dr. Ralph S. Walton
Psychiatrist”

Dr. RW (Cont.): --I have published my anecdotal, uh… studies and I’d written a chapter in Richard Wurtman’s book, so I, I think that the industry knew of my stance already. But then in the mid 90’s I wrote to the company stating that we wanted to do a double blind study because my earlier work had in deed been anecdotal. And I pointed out that they had made the claim that they would supply aspartame to any legitimate researcher. At that point I was a professor at The Northeastern Ohio College of Medicine I think qualify as a legitimate researcher. The company uh… I sent the protocol for the study to the company, and they responded that this was unnecessary research and would not supply us with aspartame. I offered to buy the aspartame, they refused. They put up road blocks. They made it very difficult for us to purchase aspartame. We had to go around them. We finally did get USP grade aspartame from a private firm. But, (short pause) the point is that the NutraSweet company made it very, very difficult, didn’t follow through on their promise to supply aspartame to any legitimate researcher. Said this was unnecessary, shouldn’t be done, needn’t be done, they tried to block it.

IN 20:33.19 Dr. RB Speaks

Dr. RB: The GD Searle Company in, uh… a quest to get approval for their product aspartame they uh… conducted a study on animals in which they fed some animals like low dose, medium dose, high dose of the uh… product. –

IN 20:49.02 Dr. RB TITLE CARD: “Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.
Board-Certified Neurosurgeon”

Dr. RB (Cont.):--And then they used controlled animals that supposedly did not get any of the product. Uh…

OUT 20:54.09 Dr. RB TITLE CARD “Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.
Board-Certified Neurosurgeon”

Dr. RB (Cont.):--when they submitted this to the FDA and FDA looked at it, there was some question about the study. Well, one of them scientist or neuroscientist looked at some of this and uh… he saw a lot of red flags. He said there are some real questions here about tumors being caused by this product, particularly brain tumors. Uh… so they uh… ordered a study to be done by the Bureau of Foods uh... which was a pre-cursor to the FDA. And uh… Dr. Jerome Bressler was in charge of this uh… group to, to look through this, the research that had been done by GD Searle, and that’s what the Bressler report is all about. And this is the uh… report here. Basically, what it shows is that either a lot of purposeful shenanigans was carried on to get this product approved, or as he states it, “It was the world’s worst research.” What they did is the animals that died after being fed NutraSweet, they didn’t autopsy the animals right away. Uh… some of them were not autopsied more than a year afterwards and of course the tissue is broken down and, and liquefied and so they couldn’t do proper studies on them. But they reported it as if they had and they reported these as normal. Uh… they found that they were taking tumors and cutting them out and throwing them away and saying the animal was normal. Uh… they had animal tissues that had obvious tumors in it that were reported normal. They had, uh… in one of the cases here that’s reported a lymph node that was enlarged and uh… this GD Searle pathologist reported it as a normal lymph node. When the scientist from the Bureau of Foods looked at it, uh… if there was an obvious lymph sarcoma, a highly malignant tumor of the uh… notations about the testicular atrophy were not noted. Uh… there were just numerous, numerous things in this, in this report that showed that uh… in my estimation there was an effort to cover up what was being found so that they could get approval.

IN 23:13.07 AE speaks and newspaper clipping: “Laboratory animals ‘back from the dead’ in faulty safety tests”

AE: There were so many things wrong with the submitted data from GD Searle originally. They had a monkey study and in this monkey study they were fed aspartame and they were fed aspartame with milk. The milk as you know normally slows down the absorption of certain—

IN 23:30.22 AE TITLE CARD “Arthur Evangelista
Former FDA Investigator”

AE (Cont.): --chemicals when you, when you drink milk. If you take aspirin and milk it will take much longer for the aspirin to go to work.--

OUT 23:37.05 AE TITLE CARD “Arthur Evangelista
Former FDA Investigator”

AE (Cont.): --Well even though the monkeys were drinking aspartame and milk, out of
the seven monkeys they had, I think one or two died and four or five had
grand mal seizures. Now these test results were not satisfactory to GE
Searle. Uh… they weren’t going to be able to show them to FDA saying
hey, look aspartame even with milk it caused monkeys to have grand mal
seizures.

IN 24:02.02 Dr. RW speaks

Dr. RW: When we did our double blind study here, at this hospital we, we had really a tragic situation which occurred, which I attributed directly to the aspartame. We needed volunteers, we looked at both patients, that is people who had a history of mood disorder, and we needed some controls, that is people without the history of mood disorder. One of the people that I used in this study was uh… the administrator for our psychiatric unit who was a PHD psychologist. - And several days into this study he had an emergency, an ophthalmologic emergency. That is, he had sudden uh… bleeding in his eye and a detachment of his retina. He had to be rushed to Cleveland for emergency surgery. His eye could not be saved. He lost the vision in one eye. At the same time, we had another participant in the study, a nurse who also had an episode of intraocular bleeding. That is bleeding within her eye. So we had two people who during the course of this study had eye emergencies. And what I found was really quite frightening and that was that yes there were many, many studies in the literature which did attest to aspartame safety. But they were essentially all funded by the industry, either Searle--the uh… NutraSweet industry or the uh… diet soft drink industry. --
These are the individuals who sponsored - paid for - the studies. There were independent studies but virtually all of the independent studies, that is, studies that were not funded by the industry, virtually all of them did identify one type of problem or another with aspartame.

IN 25:45.22 Arthur Evangelista speaks

AE: And so they got the test results they wanted by manipulating the method. This is not to say that aspartame was safe or that aspartame does not induce seizures because it does. Umm… it’s just to show you that the scientific data nowadays is unreliable.

IN 26:05.17 Dr. RW speaks

Dr. RW: So how you design a study is going to have an impact on the results and I think that many of the industry sponsored studies were set up in such a way that the results could be predicted ahead of time and would be supportive of the safety of the product.

Music plays

IN 26:21.22 TITLE CARD “What do we know?”

CB is heard saying. “sounds great, we’ll see you then. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.” before the music stops.

OUT 26:28.21 TITLE CARD “What do we know?


IN 26:29.24 CB speaks


CB: Can we go through what exactly an excitotoxin is?

IN 26:32.20 Dr. RB speaks

Dr. RB: Well an excitotoxin uh… basically what it does is a normal transmitter in the brain. These are chemicals that allow brain cells to communicate. Uh… but if it’s in even a minute over-concentration in the brain, it causes the brain cells to become extremely excited and they become so excited that very quickly burn themselves out and die. That was one of the first observations by Dr. Olney and he gave it the name excitotoxins.

IN 26:59.19 CB speaks

CB: When was the first uh… time that you hear about aspartame? Was it during that investigation with the FDA..?

IN 27:05.01 Attorney JAMES TURNER (JT) speaks

JT: Yes, it was. It was in 1970, and it was an interesting story.—

IN 27:08.19 JT TITLE CARD “James Turner, Esq.
Consumer Attorney”

JT (Cont.): --I was called by Dr. John Olney from Washington University, who I had been working with on --

OUT 27:15.25 JT TITLE CARD “James Turner, Esq.
Consumer Attorney”

JT (Cont): --MSG in baby food. We had started a, an examination of MSG in baby food that--

IN 27:19.22 Dr. John Olney (Dr. JO) TITLE CARD: “Dr. John Olney
Neuroscientist”
JT (Cont.): --led to the baby food industry taking MSG out of baby food.

OUT 27:25.00 Dr.JO TITLE CARD “Dr. John Olney
Neuroscientist”


JT (Cont.): And was done by a Senate nutrition committee, I was a special council to the Senate Select Media and Nutrition. And they, we ran hearings on food and one of the things we talked about was uh… MSG in baby food because it caused holes in the brains of rats that were being tested by Dr. Olney. And uh… there was Dr. Olney’s hypothesis that a substantial amount of mental retardation, 95% of which is of unknown origin, that a substantial portion of that came from environmental insults, chemicals in the environment, food, air, water and so forth and he was testing them. And one of them was MSG and it caused these holes in the brains of mice and his system and ultimately that led to having MSG taken out of baby food. He called me to say that he had just done a study on aspartic acid,

IN 28:12.14 TITLE CARD “Aspartic Acid”

JT (Cont.): one of the primary components of

OUT 28:15.19 TITLE CARD “Aspartic Acid”

IN 28:15.15 TITLE CARD “Aspartame”

JT (Cont.): NutraSweet and it was doing the same thing as MSG.

OUT 28:18.01 TITLE CARD “Aspartame”

JT (Cont.): And that caused him to be quite concerned about the fact that, that uh… Searle, drug-company at the time was planning to use this as a sweetener.

IN 18:26.03 Dr. RB speaks

Dr. RB: But now after years of re-testing, this most authorities agree there’s no question--

IN 28:33.26 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture “Normal” and
IN 28:33.26 TITLE ON SCREEN beneath picture “Brain of Mouse”

Dr. RB (Cont.):--that feeding MSG to animals--

OUT 24:10.03 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture “Normal”

Dr. RB (Cont.):--produces—

OUT 28:36.22 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture “Normal”

IN 28:36.22 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture as picture changes
“6 hrs. after MSG”

Dr. RB (Cont.): --this brain damage. It’s not questioned any longer, it’s a fact.--

OUT 28:39.21 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture as picture changes
“6 hrs. after MSG”

IN 28:39.21 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture as picture changes
“24 hrs. after MSG”

Dr. RB (Cont.):--Uh… there’s even good studies that show that

OUT 28:42.02 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture as picture changes
“24 hrs. after MSG”

IN 28:42;02 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture as picture changes
“4 Days after MSG”

Dr. RB (Cont.):-- if you breed the pregnant animals the MSG, their offspring—

OUT 28:46.08 TITLE ON SCREEN to the side of picture as picture changes
“4 Days after MSG” and
OUT 28:46.08 TITLE ON SCREEN beneath picture “Brain of Mouse”

Dr. RB (Cont.): --has impaired brain function and when you measure neuro-chemical
uh… analysis of the brain in the animal it’s impaired all the way through
the animal’s youth, up until adulthood. And they never quite recover
from it. The central mechanism that actually produces the destruction and damage to the brain is the excitotoxicity. That’s pretty well agreed upon now. The frightening thing is that we’re adding tons of these excitotoxins to our food, either in the form of MSG or part of the aspartame molecule uh… which is aspartic acid which is an excitotoxin.

Music plays

IN 29:22.21 TITLE ON SCREEN “Aspartic Acid”

OUT 29:24.19 TITLE ON SCREEN “Aspartic Acid”

IN 29:24.19 TITLE ON SCREEN “Phenylalanine”

OUT 29:29.19 TITLE ON SCREEN “Phenylalanine”

IN 29:31.01 DR. GERALD GAUL (DR. GG) speaks

Dr. GG: The same—

IN 29:31.19 Dr. GG TITLE CARD: “Dr. Gerald Gaul
VP of Nutrition and Medical Affairs
Nutrasweet in Mid 1980’s

Dr. GG (Cont.):--building blocks that uh… were found in all of the proteins that we eat, whether they be bananas or meat or peanuts or what, what have you, they are found in NutraSweet.

OUT 29:45.29 Dr. GG TITLE CARD: “Dr. Gerald Gaul
VP of Nutrition and Medical Affairs
Nutrasweet in Mid 1980’s

IN 29:46.05 Dr. HJR speaks


Dr. HJR: Now, the amino acids are contained in food but if you have protein uh… meat, fish, and so forth. There may be 4% phenylalanine in the food but not 50%. And we simply, biologically don’t know how to still, how to react to this, this flooding of these enormous amounts of amino acids in the body.

IN 30:16.07 Dr. RW speaks

Dr. RW: It’s also what is called a dipeptide that is, it is two amino acids stuck together. One of those amino acids is something called phenylalanine. Phenylalanine is the building block for another important neuro-transmitter called norepinephrine. So when you take in aspartame, you’ll increase the availability of one and you’ll decrease the availability of the other, you’ll change ratios and when you do that, when you change ratios of norepinephrine and serotonin you certainly affect brain function. And this can lead then to mood symptoms, to panic symptoms in some people. It’ll affect seizure threshold, I saw a lot of seizure activity in people who were taking in a great deal of aspartame.

IN 30:58.03 Dr. RB speaks

Dr. RB: They knew that this product aspartame with time breaks down into a product called diketopiperazine. Diketopiperazine chemically is closely related to a carcinogenic compound that causes cancer in a lot of animals that are exposed to it - and humans. So, they asked the GD Searle company to do a separate study with uh… the diketopiperazine. Well, when they looked at this study they found some shenanigans as well. And one of the things is when you mix up the diketopiperazine with animal’s food you have to homogenize it so that it’s evenly distributed and the animal can’t see it and avoid it. Uh… well, I’ve seen pictures of the feed and they’ve left it in big clumps so the rats were eating around it, not actually eating the diketopiperazine. There was also evidence that they were giving the diketopiperazine uh… to the control animals and of course this came out because in the original study they found a 47 fold increase in brain tumors. In their diketopiperazine repeat study they said “Oh, well look the control animals and, and a uh… aspartame fed animals have the same instance brain tumors. Well, when the neuropathologist looked at it and said well, that’s kind of strange because now your control animals have a, uh… very high incidents of brain tumors that not naturally found in these bodies. And then when they looked at the feed they found out that there was some mix ups of the feed so that the diketopiperazine was been fed to the control animals. Uh… these are the sort of things that’s in the Bressler Report that the uh… makers of NutraSweet would not like the public to know about, because it’s very frightening. Uh… you know when the pathologist uh…

IN 32:44.05 TITLE CARD “Dr. Adrian Gross
FDA Toxicologist”

Dr. RB (Cont.): --Dr. Adrian Gross looked at the, the material as well uh… very well regarded pathologist and he looked at it and he was absolutely shocked--

OUT 32:52.02 TITLE CARD “Dr. Adrian Gross
FDA Toxicologist”

Dr. RB (Cont.):--He said it ’s just an enormous increase in tumors, particularly the brain tumors. And of course that’s exactly what we are seeing now is this, tremendous increase in brain tumors in this country which is completely unexplained uh… by the neurological profession.

Note: music plays.

IN 33:07.24 WORDS ON SCREEN “Phenylalanine”

OUT 33:10.28 WORDS ON SCREEN “Phenylalanine”

IN 33:10.28 WORDS ON SCREEN “Methyl Ester”

OUT 33:19.03 WORDS ON SCREEN “Methyl Ester”


IN 33:20.08 Dr. GG speaks:

Dr. GG: There is also a methyl group—

IN 33:20.08 TITLE CARD “Dr. Gerald Gaul
V.P. of Nutrition and Medical Affairs
Nutrasweet in Mod 1980’s”

Dr. GG (Cont.)--which is found in all fruits and vegetables. Everything that we eat has methyl groups.

OUT 33:27.21 TITLE CARD “Dr. Gerald Gaul
V.P. of Nutrition and Medical Affairs
Nutrasweet in Mod 1980’s”

IN 33:28.06 Dr. R.W. speaks:

Dr. RW: When the body metabolizes and it breaks down the aspartame you wind up with a small amount of methanol which is wood alcohol. That in turn is broken down into formaldehyde which the body can not get rid of - the body stores. Now the industry has made a big deal about uh… supposedly the, the fact, it’s not really a fact but what they claim it is, that when you take in fruit you take in more methanol. They don’t add the fact that in nature the methanol in fruit is bound to something called pectin. Humans lack the enzyme to split the methanol off from pectin. So it goes through the body without doing any damage whatsoever. The body doesn’t get exposed to the methanol because it’s bound to pectin. So, even though there is more of it, it’s totally harmless in fruit but, in…with aspartame you have the pure unadulterated free methanol and then formaldehyde. It’s a small amount but the body can’t get rid of it, it’s a cumulative phenomenon. So, we have very, very toxic products.

IN 34:33.16 Dr. JB speaks:

Dr. JB: Methyl alcohol is just deadly and probably provides most of the, of the poisoning attributed to ethyl alcohol in alcoholics. It is, it is the deadly one.

IN 34:45.23 Dr. RW speaks:

Dr. RW: Aside from the pectin story, in fruit, in nature you also are taking in equal amounts of ethanol. You get both methanol and ethanol and so they counteract each other. There… so, there’s essentially no impact. You’re not poisoning yourself when you take in fruit. I believe you’re poisoning yourself when you take in aspartame.

IN 35:04.27 Dr. JB speaks:

Dr. JB: Methyl alcohol, wood alcohol has obligatory metabolism to formaldehyde. Formaldehyde, which is embalming fluid, is 5,000 times as potent of poison as is sipping alcohol.

Note: music plays very softly in background.

IN 35:23.05 TITLE CARD: “How was aspartame
Legally accepted as a
Food additive?”

OUT 35:31.05 TITLE CARD: “How was aspartame
Legally accepted as a
Food additive?”


IN 35:32.13 DR. ROBERT MOSER (Dr. RM) speaks:

Dr. RM: The FDA which is the watchdog of American safety that we—

IN 35:35.13 TITLE CARD: “Dr. Robert Moser
V.P. Nutrasweet”

Dr. RM (Cont.):--have empowered to protect the American public against food additives and drugs has repeatedly reviewed all of the data that has been forth coming from hundreds of studies about aspartame…

OUT 35:46.28 TITLE CARD: “Dr. Robert Moser
V.P. Nutrasweet

Note: music stops playing when CB intercepts commentary.

IN 35:47.15 CB speaks and the DATE: “1965” appears on screen.

CB: Back in 1965, according to GD Searle, one of their researchers was working on an ulcer drug when he happened to get some of the substance on his finger and instinctively he licked it, noticing its sweet taste.

OUT 36:01.24 DATE: “1965”

IN 36:01.24 ONSCREEN DATE: “1970” and image of study title page with words:
SC-18862
52 WEEK ORAL TOXICITY STUDY IN THE
INFANT MONKEY”

CB (Cont.): --One of the first tests conducted on aspartame was a 52 week study of monkeys to determine the effects of aspartame on primates. Seven monkeys were fed aspartame with milk of monkeys to determine the effects of aspartame on primates. Seven monkeys were fed aspartame with milk five of those monkeys had grand mal seizures and one died.


OUT 36:18.29 ONSCREEN DATE: “1970” and image of study title page with words:
SC-18862
52 WEEK ORAL TOXICITY STUDY IN THE
INFANT MONKEY”


IN 36:18.29 AE speaks:

AE: Monkeys have more of a reaction to ethanol, regular alcohol like vodka or scotch—

IN 36:25.21 TITLE CARD: “Arthur Evangelista
Former FDA Investigator”

AE (Cont.): --They had a real high resistance to methanol and even though they were fed—

OUT 36:32.27 TITLE CARD: “Arthur Evangelista
Former FDA Investigator”

AE (Cont.): -- aspartame with milk, they still came down with seizures and, and one died of I guess of cardiac arrest from over stimulated nervous system. Umm… Searle went back and got another physician a, a fellow named Dr. Wellington and this guy sat down and re-designed the monkey study.

IN 36:54.01 CB speaks and DATE appears onscreen: “1970”

CB: In that same year Dr. John Olney found that oral intake of aspartic acid could cause brain tumors in mice.

OUT 37:01.17 DATE: “1970”

IN 37:01.17 JT speaks:

JT: We had this situation—

IN 37:04.05 TITLE CARD: “Jim Turner, Esq.
Consumer Attorney”

JT (Cont.): -- where the company uh… initially seemed to be responsive to the concerns and uh… they actually sent uh… a team of researchers—

OUT 37:11.11 TITLE CARD: “Jim Turner, Esq.
Consumer Attorney”

JT (Cont.): -- to Dr. Olney’s laboratory and uh… they recreated the studies. The Searle, the Searle investigators recreated the studies that uh… showed these, this brain damage in animals and uh… they went back to Searle and uh… we waited to hear what Searle was going to do about this and the next thing we knew, I, I, would say that they probably went to Dr. Olney’s lab in mid 71’. Mid 73’ they applied to FDA for a food additive petition to use NutraSweet as a sweetener. So, I called the FDA and I said, “this doesn’t, this doesn’t make any sense.”

IN 37:46.18 AE speaks:

AE: Dr. Olney uh… was asked by GD Searle to conduct a study because there were some concerns and it’s interesting to note that these concerns came up before a lot of the major testing in to the toxicity of aspartame became apparent. But, my thinking as an FDA investigator is that GD Searle already knew that, going into this.

IN 38:09.06 JT speaks:

JT: Ultimately, FDA - using it’s good offices interestingly enough - a major person there created a meeting between me uh… uh… Searle and General Foods which was going to be one of the main customers and we met. And uh… I said I didn’t think this would ever reach the market. And they said well they were sure it was going to be approved. And I thought that we were on 180 degrees, opposite sides. It turned out that it was approved but FDA asked them not to market it and they held it up so that there could be hearings and so forth.

IN 38:44.06 CB speaks and TEXT and DATE appear onscreen:
“APPROVAL” and “1974”

CB: In 1974, the FDA approved the limited use of aspartame.

OUT 38:50.14 TEXT and DATE leave screen:
“APPROVAL” and “1974”

IN 38:50.14 CB speaks:

CB: Do you know why they were sure it was going to be approved. You said that they, they said that it was sure that they, that it….

IN 38:57.15 JT interrupts and speaks:

JT: Well, see, see when I said I don’t think it’s going to re.., reach the market I was being very particular but I didn’t believe it was going to be approved because the evidence didn’t show. They said it was. Now, now one uh… very strange fact in all of that is that I knew that they had the brain damage study from Olney’s labs that there own people had done. And we talked about the various pieces of evidence that uh… were problems. And I finally said, “What about the brain damage problem from the animals in Dr. Olney’s laboratory that your own people have gone and looked at?” and he said, “We don’t think those are going to be a problem.” Well, it turned out they weren’t a problem because they didn’t give them to the FDA. So, so here they had in their own files a study that raised very serious questions that they did not give to the FDA. That’s a violation of law.

IN 39:48.13 CB speaks with picture of “Searle” building

CB: GD Searle did not inform the FDA of this study until after aspartame’s approval. This approval came despite the fact that FDA scientists found serious deficiencies in all tests related to genetic damage.

IN 40:02.29 JT speaks:

JT: And so all these concerns were all rolling around inside FDA and they were trying to organize them into a policy and every time they would organize them into a policy at the bench and at science level and they would go up one level to the, were the policy people were, where the policy people would overrule them.

IN 40:19.03 CB speaks and appears in front of a report, whose title reads:
“Brain Damage in Infant Mice Follow…
…Oral Intake of Glutate, Aspartic…
…Cysteine”

CB: A month later Olney and Turner filed a formal objection, stating that they believed that aspartame could cause brain damage.

IN 40:26.23 JT speaks:

JT: But any way we, we filed our petition Dr. Olney filed one and I filed one attacking the approval and the FDA said, “right - there are some factual information we should look into, we’ll have a public hearing.”

IN 40:37.14 AE speaks:

AE: Only because some of the investigators working for the Food and Drug Administration in looking at this data knew that data did not contain adequate safety information about aspartame.

IN 40:50.29 CB speaks and DATE appears onscreen: “1975”

CB: In 1975, due to serious questions over the—

IN xxxxxxx FDA logo appears

CB (Cont.): -- quality and validity of GD Searle’s testing of aspartame and other pharmaceuticals, the FDA formed a special task force to examine 11 of the pivotal studies on aspartame.

IN 41:05.16 TEXT appears onscreen: “all most important
tests were in this group”

IN 41:05.16 DATE appears onscreen: “1976”

CB (Cont.): --In March of 1976, the FDA completed their 500 page report after finishing their investigation.

IN 41:13.10 JT speaks:

JT: The uh… report by the FDA uh… team that inspect… inspected it is the most devastating report about research that has probably ever been written about a specific company. And uh… that led to a uh… series of hearings in congress and came up with a $12,000,000 appropriation the FDA to enforce uh…uh…good laboratory practices. But what happened is, there’s a policy resolution but, Nu… NutraSweet and uh…and uh… Searle got bypassed. In the sense that they took this all over here and said look at this terrible that’s going on. There were a couple of others that were going on at the same time. We’ve got to do something, and they did something. What they did was going forward you have to meet these requirements. They didn’t do anything about going backwards and saying, “look, this stuff you’re putting, the stuff that came through here (there’s a ring in the background) is uh… killing people.” Now, the reason that they didn’t do that at the time, (there’s ringing in the background again) cause it happened in 50, uh… 75’ and 76’ is that it was the assumption of everyone in the process that the FDA was going to handle it. So FDA, one of the things FDA did that was so uh… striking and remarkable is that they uh… knowing that they had this terrible situation on their hands hired a uh…, a uh… group of pathologists. It’s a pathology research group. FDA hired them to review the Searle studies, but had Searle pay for it.
So the result was, here’s a company which makes its money by being hired and paid for to do studies. Well, why would it do a study that was going to be critical of NutraSweet?

IN 42:46.02 CB speaks and DATE appears onscreen: “1977”

CB: In 1977, the FDA chief council Richard Merill recommends to US Attorney Samuel Skinner that a grand jury be set up to investigate GD Searle. Suddenly, US Attorney—

IN 42:58.13 TEXT appears onscreen: “Samuel Skinner”

CB (Cont.) --Samuel Skinner began preliminary employment discussions with GD Searle’s law firm--

IN 43:03.23 TEXT appears onscreen: “Sidley and Austin”

CB (Cont.): --Sidley & Austin. The US Justice Department urged attorney Samuel Skinner--

OUT 43:05.07 TEXT leaves screen: “Samuel Skinner”
OUT 43:09.12 TEXT leaves screen: “Sidley and Austin”


CB (Cont.): -- to proceed with the grand jury—

IN 43:09.12 TEXT appears onscreen:
“Statute of Limitations
For violations:

Aspartame Related
Waisman Monkey Study
(Buried Study)
10/10/77
Faulty Hamster Study
(Dead Hamsters
reported to be fine)
12/8/1977”

CB (Cont.): -- pointing out that the statute of limitations on prosecution would soon run out. Samuel Skinner withdrew from the GD Searle case and Assistant US Attorney William Conlon was assigned to the grand jury investigation. Shortly, afterwards Samuel Skinner left his job to work for GD Searle’s law firm. The assistant—

OUT 43:35.28 TEXT leaves screen:
“Statute of Limitations
For violations:

Aspartame Related
Waisman Monkey Study
(Buried Study)
10/10/77
Faulty Hamster Stduy
(Dead Hamsters
reported to be fine)
12/8/1977”

CB (Cont.): -- he left behind let the statute of limitations run out on the aspartame charges--

IN 43:36.07 TEXT appears onscreen: “Assistant U.S. Attorney
William Conlon”

CB (Cont.): --This assistant William Conlon was—

IN 43:39.06 TEXT appears onscreen: “Sidley and Austin”

CB (Cont.): --hired 15 months later by GD Searle’s law firm: Sidley & Austin.

OUT 43:44.23 TEXT leaves screen: “Assistant U.S. Attorney
William Conlon”
OUT 43:44.23 TEXT leaves screen: “Sidley and Austin”

IN 43:44.23 AE speaks:

AE: Uh… the common denominator for all of this unfortunately is money and the amount of money that was flashed around umm… induced people to drop the lawsuit against GD Searle and come work for the very firm that they were going to uh… try for illegal activity. If they passed aspartame literally, they were promised great jobs when they finished with FDA.

IN 44:17.13 JT speaks:

JT: Uh… it was interesting though, the main guy that made the decisions that overruled them in the Bureau of Foods went on to work for the uh… soft drink association. And actually seven of the key people that made decisions, that kept NutraSweet moving through the process ended up working for one or another NutraSweet-using industry. That’s kind of an interesting side affect of the whole thing.

IN 44:38.01 DONALD RUMSFELD (DR) speaks:

DR: I like to do well at things. It’s, it’s important—

IN 44:39.19 TITLE CARD: “Donald Rumsfeld
President of Searle
1977 to Aspartame’s Approval”

DR (Cont.): -- to me that if you’re given an assignment that you try to do it the best you can. I’m afraid that some people confuse that with some sort of uh… single mindedness on my part uh…

OUT 44:51.18 TITLE CARD: “Donald Rumsfeld
President of Searle
1977 to Aspartame’s Approval”

IN 44:51.22 JT speaks:

JT: Donald Rumsfeld uh… went into the company after he left Washington. After Ford lost and uh…

IN 44:58.18 TITLE CARD: “Donald Rumsfeld
President of Searle
1977 to Aspartame’s Approval”

JT (Cont.): --that would be in uh… 1977 was in business and went to congressman from there and then he went to the White House where he —

OUT 45:07.19 TITLE CARD: “Donald Rumsfeld
President of Searle
1977 to Aspartame’s Approval”

JT (Cont.): -- was White House Chief of Staff and then he became Se… Secretary of Defense. He’s a very, he’s uh… very uh… bright guy like in the best and the brightest, you know, the kind of people that brought us Vietnam. These are people that believe thinking is the primary way that you get through life - having values, feelings, and so forth: they denigrate. So, he took over this company and, and it was in, it was going down the tubes completely. It had the FDA investigations, it had uh…, it had uh… grand jury investigations, it was losing money, its stock was down. Uh… a person was hired to come in and explain why the FDA was so down on them and went through all of their records and said, “you guys haven’t got a chance, this company is, is a mess, a total mess.” And he went in with a full team of politicians. They took on the issue of this company as a political issue. And uh… one of the first things that he uh…at first, but somewhere in that first year, it was late in the year, he called me and said “let’s have a meeting.” So, I went and I met with him and flew into the Madison Hotel and we met with, and we met and we talked. And my point was that the uh… struggle that was going on around NutraSweet was a scientific struggle. We needed to know the scientific answers. And this was before the public board of inquiry had ruled. We needed to know the answers so why don’t we, the people who were raising all of the questions about NutraSweet, and the company together create a uh… a set of protocols that we would agree, address the serious questions that need to be looked at to decide whether or it should be put on the market. So we had this meeting and uh…we and uh… for about six months his staff and I and, and our group negotiated out how we could proceed on this. His own scientist didn’t want to do it. For example, at the, the time that uh… uh… they put their evidence in FDA in 19 uh… in 1973, there were no requirements at FDA to examine affects on the brain from food additives. No requirements whatsoever. So, there never was a study done to look at whether or not this affected the brain in uh… in a neurological sense. The cancer studies were incidental, those were cancer studies. But these were not brain studies. The cancer studies turned up brain tumors, but they didn’t look for example at these holes in the brain or mental retardation, or lowering the ability of people to think or causing dizziness or blindness or any of those things. None of that was looked at. And uh… we were proposing that we design some studies to look at it. And uh…that was the direction I thought we should go. And I should say that at that point, I was involved with a group of people from uh… the food industry, we had created something called the Food Safety Council. We had 35 major corporations and it had a board that was half corporate people and half uh… consumer advocates, academic people, environmentalists and so forth to look at the standards for food safety. And we had written a whole series of standards for food safety. Basically, what I was saying to Rumsfeld is, why don’t you bring your company into the same frame work that all of these other companies have agreed to be a part of. And uh… and uh… we had a very good, very full and frank exchange. His scientist kept jumping up and running around the room and saying there’s no problem, there’s no problem, there’s no problem. Ultimately, he made the decision not to find out what the facts were but to move forward on the limited record that they had before them and I believe it was a decision that was made that said we can out… we can accomplish our ends better legally and politically than we can by actually doing the science to determine the outcome of the questions that are being asked. And in my mind, (phone ringing in the background) that demonstrated that he was an individual not interested in facts, not interested in the truth, not interested in finding out what the fundamental realities are but much, much more interested in setting a goal and then, and then by will and force pulling all of the resources that he could possibly pull together to achieve that goal i.e. get NutraSweet on the market and sold.

IN 49:02.16 CB speaks

And so, Donald Rumsfeld had been in all, in all of these meetings and known uh… all of these potentially harm…very harmful effects of this substance that he then went on and continued to market? Is?

IN 49:14.03 JT speaks

Well, I, I can’t say what Donald Rumsfeld knew or didn’t know. Uh… he’s not a scientist he’s not very interested in science from what I can tell. More or less uh… he’s uh… you know he’s uh… he’s uh… a fixer, he’s uh… he’s a uh… he’s a uh… an operative. He, he uh… you’ll assign him a job and he goes and he does it. Uh… now I’m, I’m sure that as he gets up into the level of Defense Department he… he sort of makes up his own jobs and says, “I’m going to do these things.” But the, but facts are not all that important to how he proceeds because he’s so confident that he knows what the outcome should be that he will look acr… at least in the way he looked at NutraSweet, he looked across the horizon to find all of those facts that would support his position and minimize or denigrated all of the facts that didn’t support his position.

IN 49:58.21 CB speaks and DATE appears onscreen: “1980”

CB: In 1980, the Public Board of Inquiry voted unanimously to reject the use of aspartame until additional studies could be done on aspartame’s potential to cause brain tumors.

IN 50:10.20 JT speaks:

JT: The product was uh… was uh… said not to be, it was ruled by law, it was said, “you can not market this product.” And then they had to go and do uh… quick political triage and get in there and manipulate the process. So, I mean the, that the manipulation was so powerful that uh… one of the first things that Ronald Reagan did when he became President was to suspend the authority of the FDA Commissioner to take any actions. So, he was sworn in, in whatever day in January and the next day he issued a, an executive order eliminating the FDA Commissioner’s authority to take actions. Uh… there was obviously a fear on the part of somebody that, that the Commissioner was going to do something about NutraSweet or something else that would create difficulty, cause it took him a while to get a new Commissioner to come over, a little over a month, to get a new Commissioner get the old one out and the new one in. And in that month, the old Commissioner was prevented from taking any actions by an executive order. And that, that takes a high level of political clout to do that. But that’s political triage on a situation that had gone sour uh… uh… because Rumsfeld had made the decision to uh… uh… just power his way through and, and ignore getting the facts.

IN 51:18.22 CB speaks and DATE appears onscreen: “1981”

CB: In 1981, the day after Ronal Reagan took office as US President, GD Searle re-applied for the approval of aspartame. Several new studies were submitted along with their application. Three of the five—

IN 51:31.23 TEXT appears onscreen: “Against” under picture of 3 people and “For” under picture of two people

CB (Cont.): --FDA scientists responsible for reviewing brain tumor issues advised against the approval of aspartame.

OUT 51:39.02 TEXT leaves screen: “Against” under picture of 3 people and “For” under picture of two people

CB (Cont.): --Under the watch of the new FDA—

IN 51:41.06 TEXT appears onscreen: “Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes”

CB (Cont.): --Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes—

OUT 51:44.01 TEXT leaves screen: “Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes”
TEXT appears onscreen: “Against” under picture of 3 people and “For”
under picture of two people

CB (Cont.): -- the panel lawyer assigned a new panel member to eventually achieve a three to three split over aspartame. On July 18th, 1981—

OUT 51:55.01 TEXT leaves screen: “Against” under picture of 3 people and “For” under picture of two people

CB (Cont.): --Arthur Hull Hayes overruled the Public Board of Inquiry to approve aspartame for use in dry foods.

IN 52:00.01 JT speaks:

JT: Furthermore, the FDA impaneled its own panel to review to The Public Board of Inquiry. Three of those people were assigned review the cancer part of the Public Board of Inquiry, the part that said you can’t market it. Those three scientists - every single one of them - said, “we agree with the Public Board of Inquiry” These are three FDA Senior Scientists, we agree with the Public Board of Inquiry. They met with the Commissioner the night before he announced that he was going to approve NutraSweet and begged him not to approve NutraSweet.

IN 52:30.18 CB speaks and DATE appears onscreen: “1983”

CB: In 1983, the FDA approved the use of aspartame in carbonated beverages. Under charges of improprieties, Arthur Hull Hayes left the FDA and was hired as a consultant for a $1,000 a day by GD Searle’s Public Relations firm.

OUT 52:45.19 DATE leaves screen: “1983”


IN 52:51.13 CB speaks:


CB: I did drink six to ten cans of diet soda per day for 20 years and when my body told me to stop, I eventually got better. I can also state that I’ve spoken to health care professionals who agree with me that aspartame is a probable culprit. When I first embarked upon this journey, a part of me was expecting to return empty-handed. What I uncovered however was that the current measures of food safety are failing us.

IN 53:21.15 Credit roll

Note: music is softly playing in background while a Cori and JT WALDRON (JTW) speak in what seems to be a moving vehicle.

IN 53:21.15 CORI BRACKETT in moving car

JTW: So, what do we do today?

CB: We drove, (laughs) and drove, and drove and now we’re gonna drive some more.

Note: music is still playing in the background, ….. Cori is no longer speaking from a vehicle. It seems to be a re-cap of interviews previously done.

IN 53:37.09 LORENA MURRAY (LM) speaks:

LM: But at… after that I mean just each day was just better and better and better. And I’m still finding things that it’s in because they don’t label it very well and that is very, very aggravating umm… because you have to read each label and I’ve got three kids and everything and I don’t have a whole lot of time to go spending a year and a half in the grocery store to do a weeks worth of groceries and read every label that I get my hands on.

IN 53:57.24 ED JOHNSON (EJ) speaks:

EJ: Yeah, the slightest thing would distract me, like if I was in the middle of a cross examination and a…a big cat would run across. Something totally distracting would just totally knock me of my track. So
those were all the side effects of the radiation and the aspartame.


OUT 54:20.02 END.


Note: music has continued to play on until a short time after the end of the recording.