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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1174
criminal coverup re autism caused by mercury from thimerosal in infant
vaccines [very like aspartame]: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: Lesli Mitchell:
Murray 2005.06.18

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal/index.html

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal/print.html

A Salon/Rolling Stone joint investigation
- - - - - - - - - - - -

Deadly immunity:
When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused
autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data --
and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the
epidemic.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

June 16, 2005  |  In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and
health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood
conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat
center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to
ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the
session -- only private invitations to 52 attendees. There were high-level
officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine
specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives
of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth
and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC
officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed."
There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with
them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss
a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a
host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young
children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had
analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of
100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines --
thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism
and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually
stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood,
citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between
thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and
autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three
additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young
infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of
cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children
to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and
death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want,"
Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the
group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an
immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson
had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more
alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do
not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know
better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the
vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood
spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging
data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information
Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations
about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.

"We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits,"
said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for
Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff
attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the
CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we
have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible
hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health
Organization, declared flatly that the study "should not have been done at
all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used
in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be
handled."

In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the
damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of
Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal,
ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It
withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for
immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had
been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of
Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a
private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time
Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for
GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal
and autism.

Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of
injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their
mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave
them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing
countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in
some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as
tetanus boosters routinely given to 11-year-olds.

The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in
Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in
contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize
vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the
parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to
seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the
Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of
thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a
rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill,
the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of
his book on bioterrorism. Congress repealed the measure in 2003 -- but
earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism
bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related
brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put
vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a
biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant
to Frist.

Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up
the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana,
oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was
diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is
directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform
Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability
may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the
switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a
known neurotoxin." The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act,
the committee added, out of "institutional malfeasance for self protection"
and "misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."

The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide
the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of
institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy
only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years
working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic
children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by
vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical. I doubted that autism could be blamed
on a single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to
reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly
childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep.
Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on
the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about
autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about immunization,"
Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"

It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading
scientific research and talking with many of the nation's preeminent
authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between
thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real.
Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation -- those
born between 1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from
vaccines. "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have
symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school
nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are
supposed to be making us healthier; however, in 25 years of nursing I have
never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is
happening to our children."

More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians
diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown
until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children born in
the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.

Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by
thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of
better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that
most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of
children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs
Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then
where are all the 20-year-old autistics?"

Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater
cumulative "load" of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to
dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of
a much larger problem. It's a concern that certainly deserves far more
attention than it has received -- but it overlooks the fact that the mercury
concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.

What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives
have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal. From
the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has
been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and
bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin.
Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the
brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with
vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly
susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much
lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children
still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from
children's vaccines 20 years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain
and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.

"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says
Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky.
"It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its
brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you
put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be
shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal,
knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death --
in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by
administering it to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died
within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in
its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine
manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's
safety "did not check with ours." Half the dogs Pittman injected with
thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare
the preservative "unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs."

In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to
mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the
preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it
"poison."

In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal
killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own
studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in
concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the
concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to
promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical
disinfectants. In 1977, 10 babies at a Toronto hospital died when an
antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained
thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal
vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants
be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be
vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants
would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and
diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year
that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the
fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that 6-month-olds
who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury.
He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on
infants and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic
alternatives. "The best way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing
the actual vaccines without adding preservatives."

For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money.
Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials
that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because
they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger
vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it
cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished
regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this "cost consideration," Merck
ignored Hilleman's warnings, and government officials continued to push more
and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American
preschoolers received 11 vaccinations -- for polio,
diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later,
thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22
immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children
exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with
thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during
a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers
of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose
of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. "What
took the FDA so long to do the calculations?" Peter Patriarca, director of
viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. "Why
didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly
expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"

But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their
vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months were being injected with a
total of 187 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 40 percent greater than
the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin.
Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger
because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several
studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of
Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing
brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury. Under the expanded
schedule of vaccinations, multiple shots were often administered on a single
day: At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of
development, children routinely received three innoculations that delivered
99 times the approved limit of mercury.

Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional
vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal
is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot
afford the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul
Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisors, told me, "I think if we really
have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next 20 years,
because we always do -- there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280
million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials."

But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of
those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had
close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid
consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and shares a patent on a
measles vaccine with Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine.
Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the
vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research
on the hepatitis B vaccine.

Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such
conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC "routinely
allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on
intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines,"
even though they have "interests in the products and companies for which
they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight." The House Government
Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved
guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical
companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that
he "would make money" if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product.
But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in
CDC approval might bias his judgment. "It provides no conflict for me," he
insists. "I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it.
When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make
recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It's
offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket
of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for
children. It's just not the way it works."

Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like
Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health,
proud of their "partnerships" with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the
seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose
anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children's health. They are often
resentful of questioning. "Science," says Offit, "is best left to
scientists."

Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of
interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the
FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the
danger posed by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy
way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and
immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal
until now," Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and
the pharmaceutical industry, he added, "will also raise questions about
various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use" of
thimerosal in child vaccines.

If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the
potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance
after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more
studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC
placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood
vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to
a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could
not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of
Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of
Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain
disorders.

The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr.
Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee,
told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not
ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal
exposure.

According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer,
Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence
was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal
and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to
Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the
CDC.

For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the
revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had
worked for. "We've got a dragon by the tail here," said Dr. Michael Kaback,
another committee member. "The more negative that [our] presentation is, the
less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what
the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work
our way out of the trap, I think is the charge."

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in
studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current
studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and
thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for
vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton
University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of
research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of
autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure
parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for
Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.

In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its
conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in
vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the
toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed
epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children
received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited
a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics,
that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The
new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and
overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case
closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended
that no further research be conducted.

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David
Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House
Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it
relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design"
and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research."
CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon
told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force
them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children.
Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"

Under pressure from Congress, parents and a few of its own panel members,
the Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the
findings of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different
scientists, criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and
urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.

So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark
Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David,
spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since
August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the
data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful
correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One
study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children
born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a
"very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study
of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of
thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed
with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech
disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study shows
that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of
thimerosal from most vaccines.

As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying
vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April,
reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies
himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in
vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a
"control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County,
Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of
autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the
Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury
from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from
outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of
thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks,
the Iowa Legislature was carefully combing through all of the available
scientific and biological data. "After three years of review, I became
convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between
mercury and the increased incidences in autism," says state Sen. Ken
Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. "The fact that Iowa's
700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more
vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules, is solid evidence
alone." Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines,
followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in 32 other
states.

But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to
include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as
steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues
to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some
of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China,
where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of
thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that
there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are
hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India,
Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using
thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist
thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is
linked to neurological disorders "under review."

I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral
crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our
public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to
poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably
constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine.
"The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill,
vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the
role of mercury in medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is
massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than
anything you've ever seen." It's hard to calculate the damage to our
country -- and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic
diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that America's most
heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not
difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's
enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even
idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on
thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of
protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are
badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back
horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations.

This story has been corrected since it was originally published.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense
Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of
Waterkeeper Alliance. He is the co-author of "The Riverkeepers."

Send us a Letter to the Editor:
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Secrets and lies:
Is the astonishing rise in autism a medical mystery or a pharmaceutical
shame?  By Lesli Mitchell   08/02/00
http://dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/08/02/autism/index.html?sid=923233
06/03/05, 23400 bytes   [ Need paid subscription to read. ]

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misc.kids.health > Secrets and Lies: Autism Epidemic A Medical Mystery or
Pharmaceutical Shame?

John  Aug 3 2000, 3:00 am
Newsgroups: misc.kids.health, sci.med
From: "John" w...@whaleto.freeserve.co.uk
Date: 2000/08/03
Subject: Secrets and Lies: Autism Epidemic A Medical Mystery or
Pharmaceutical Shame?

Secrets and lies
Is the astonishing rise in autism a medical mystery or a pharmaceutical
shame? http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/08/02/autism/index.html
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Lesli Mitchell

August 2, 2000 | As an Internet project manager in telecommunications, I am
familiar with the symbiotic business relationship of industry and
government. I understand the dynamics of profit, getting new products to
market as quickly as possible, negotiating "value-added" partnerships, and
above all the potential for ethics to be sublimated to the bottom line.

As a mother, I didn't want to believe that the same business practices
applied in medicine, because that would have meant accepting the possibility
that my child was perceived first and foremost as a target market. A new
mother is particularly vulnerable, and most of us harbor a trust bordering
on reverence for the medical community, believing its members to be
omniscient and above reproach.

When I held my baby in my arms for the first time and understood the
magnitude of my responsibility, my faith in medicine translated into an
implicit contract with my doctor: My job is to love him; your job is to keep
him well.

And my baby was well, at least until 1998, when, at 2 years old, he was
diagnosed with autism. When I read statistics from the Department of
Education that said autism in school-age children had increased 556 percent
in five years, skyrocketing past any other disability, I was shocked and
horrified. But I trusted what my doctors told me: that the increase was due
to better diagnostic skills, not to any real increase in autism.

It took two years for that trust to erode, chipped away by increasing
evidence that business motives had mandated my child's health. I learned
that congressional investigations were underway into key members of the Food
and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control who vote on U.S.
immunization policy despite a web of conflicts of interest: panel members
who owned stock in vaccine makers, received research grants from those
companies or even owned vaccine patents themselves.

I found out that vaccines given to my child had unsafe amounts of mercury,
contained in the preservative thimerosal: a fact that led to the
introduction this year of new "thimerosal-free" vaccines. I learned that
last year a rotavirus vaccine was rushed to market too soon, without enough
research, and had to be suspended by federal health officials because
children were experiencing life-threatening bowel obstructions.

But it was during a conference this June that I crossed over to the other
side, from conventional mom to vaccine-reform advocate, and began sounding
more and more like Mulder in "The X-Files," saying to anyone who would
listen, "The truth is out there."

At an autism conference in Irvine, Calif., I heard the first theory that
made sense to me intuitively, not just about autism but about other children
who were sick, children I could see around me every day, children of my
friends, the "typical" children who shared my son's classroom. Respected
doctors and researchers presented evidence that the rise in autism over the
past decade was related to immune system impairment, part of a spectrum of
other childhood illnesses on the rise such as allergies, asthma, ADHD,
learning disabilities and seizure disorders.

What was causing the immune system to turn against itself? The research was
pointing to bombardment by multiple vaccines that overwhelmed the immature
immune systems of infants and toddlers.

My son Connor was a perfect baby, the kind you see in commercials: engaging,
happy, angelic. I had a normal delivery after a pitocin-and-epidural labor,
and Connor scored a 9 on his Apgar, nursed vigorously, never had colic,
smiled early and even laughed in his sleep at six weeks old. We figured we
were doing everything right. When he got sick with his first ear infection
at three months -- the first of many to come -- we did what most parents do:
We relied completely on his doctor for treatment.

The American Academy of Pediatrics cautions against vaccinating children who
are sick. I didn't know this policy at the time, and apparently neither did
anyone in the doctor's office, because I was never told about it. What I did
know was that he was supposed to get 33 vaccines before he started school,
many of them simultaneously. My refrigerator magnet "freebie" of the
vaccination schedule, included along with my complimentary diaper bag and
free formula from the hospital, showed that he would be receiving as many as
eight vaccines at the same time: combined measles, mumps, rubella (MMR),
combined diptheria, tetanus, pertussis (DPT), polio and haemophilus
influenzae type B. It seemed like a lot at one time, but I was simply
grateful that the combination vaccines meant he would have fewer overall
injections.

The ear infection and vaccination pattern continued unabated during Connor's
infancy and into his toddler months. His reactions to vaccines ranged from
nothing to crankiness to occasional fevers. All of these reactions were
considered normal, and all of them passed within a day. The ear infections
became harder to treat over time, as if Connor's system was building up an
immunity to the frequent antibiotics.

One day in June of 1998 I noticed that his left ear was pushed out from his
head. I had no idea what it meant but I took him to the doctor. Despite
being on antibiotics, his latest ear infection had progressed into
mastoiditis and he was rushed to the emergency room to get tubes in his ears
that same day. The ear infections ceased. But an illness remained with him
that was far worse than we had ever anticipated.

Much of his first year had been a period of triumphs. I marked his skills in
my dog-eared copy of "What To Expect Your First Year," noting with
satisfaction that he was hitting all of his milestones early. I could see
that he was a sharp kid, alert to the world around him, and I was proud of
his precocious awareness. This ability to focus extended to people as
well -- he was compassionate and gentle in his temperament, possessing an
unusual insight into the moods of the people around him. I honestly believed
he showed early gifts of self-awareness and sensitivity to others.

Around his first birthday everything began to change. Connor regressed in
his social behavior and speech and seemed to lose ground on all of his
milestones. We had trouble getting his attention. We would call his name
over and over again and finally had to look him in the face to get a
response. At his birthday party, he was more interested in his balloons,
ribbons and boxes than his new toys or the people celebrating around him. He
would play with his toys repetitively and in unusual ways, like flipping
over his bubble lawn mower to spin the wheels or rolling objects down a ramp
for 30 minutes straight. Family members commented jovially that he might be
a physics or engineering prodigy, already testing objects to see how they
performed.

But when his language started to deteriorate, we lost any hope for his Nobel
Prize and wanted desperately for him just to act normal. At 22 months he was
mute; instead of pointing or naming things, he would lead one of us by the
hand and place it on the thing he wanted. He preferred to watch the same
video of "Thomas the Tank Engine" all day long rather than play with us.
When people came over to our house he was shy, more than shy -- he would run
away and hide -- and if we forced him out he would throw his body to the
ground and scream.

I could see that the core of his real personality was still there, but I
could only bring it out in him when he was totally at ease, which meant
without distractions or interruptions in his routine. Even his diet changed
for the worse. He would only eat about five foods -- crackers, Cheerios,
McDonald's French fries, chips and cookies.

Time to take Connor back to the doctor, I thought. He'll know. He'll confirm
my mom's intuition that something is very wrong. But he didn't.
"He used to talk and now he's quit talking."

"Well, he's been sick from the ear infections. Have you considered having
his hearing tested?"

"Yes, we thought of that. His hearing is normal. I'm also worried that he's
only eating a few foods, and he's not getting any vegetables and fruits
anymore."

The doctor laughed. "My kids are extremely picky, too. As long as his weight
is OK -- looks like he's in the 80th percentile -- I wouldn't worry about
it. Toddlers are very finicky. As long as he's getting a multivitamin he's
getting everything he needs."

Meanwhile Connor is flapping his arms and spinning in circles. I watched for
a while. "So he's OK?"

My doctor's forte was reassuring worried moms. "Of course. He's fine. Let's
see him again in a month and make sure his weight is on target."

As it turned out we didn't see the doctor again for a few months. By that
time Connor's day care staff had evaluated his development and determined
that he was autistic.

Months earlier, when we hadn't suspected any problems, I had enrolled Connor
part-time in a day care program that mixed typical kids and special needs
kids. My mother was physically disabled, and I wanted Connor to grow up in
an environment that didn't exclude the handicapped. As it turned out the
decision was a blessing -- the staff therapists had seen plenty of autistic
kids, unlike my doctor, who had never seen even one (and who admitted
humbly, later, that he only got three days of education on autism in med
school). But the day care staff was able to diagnose him earlier than many
kids with the same condition, which was probably the key to Connor's
eventual progress.

I remember very clearly my first reaction to the label of autism: "But my
kid's not Rain Man." And he wasn't. When I started reading I found out the
real statistics on autism, and they were scary. There was a new crop of kids
who had what many called "acquired autism." Unlike Dustin Hoffman's
character, the kids progressed normally until their second year and during
that period lost any accumulated skills and socially retreated from people.
The late-onset kids made the current genetic theory suspect -- if the cause
was inborn, the kids would never have gained ground in the first place.
Plus, the rate of these kids was staggering: In 10 years the incidence of
autism had increased from one child in 10,000 to one child in 500. No one
was sure why.

So I continued to go to doctors -- immunologists to help me understand why
Connor's mosquito bites took six weeks to heal; neurologists to explain why
his IQ was so low it couldn't be measured; allergists to tell me why his
cheeks and ears got red when he ate certain foods; gastroenterologists to
relieve his constipation. Over and over again I was told that the outlook
for autistic kids was grim, there was no treatment available for his
symptoms, that perhaps I should consider putting him (and myself) on Prozac
to help with his behavior.

Frustrated by the lack of sympathy and knowledge in the medical community, I
networked with parents on the Internet and read as much as I could on my
own. I decided to focus on cures instead of causes. Some parents had
actually been able to "recover" their children with behavioral therapy, or
ABA. This therapy used a one-on-one approach to teach autistic kids how to
interact in the world, to talk, to socialize, to learn academic concepts, to
regain the skills they had lost or never developed. We started within weeks
of Connor's diagnosis. In my heart and in my prayers I asked for one thing:
Please, please let him say "mama" to me again.

And, amazingly, he did progress. One of Connor's doctors, who had seen the
results of the therapy with her own eyes, agreed to write a prescription for
this treatment, and I sent it along with my claims to the medical insurer.
The claim was denied because the therapy was considered "educational." We
continued to spend around $2,000 every month on behavioral treatment anyway.

It was the only thing that was working.

Within a year Connor began talking again, regaining his old words first:
mama (Yes!), daddy, cookie, no. Then he had a cognitive leap when language
finally seemed to "click," and he was off and running. He sought out adults
and other children to talk to and play games with, caught up to age level in
comprehension, bypassed his classmates in academics, and even developed a
sense of humor (he renamed "Carnotaurs from Disney's "Dinosaur" movie to
"Connor-taurs").

In March of this year he finally lost his autism label, after a year and a
half (at 25 hours per week) of intensive ABA. His speech was still a year
behind, but it was appropriate, and his therapists predicted that by the
time he started first grade he would have the same basic skills as his
peers. I breathed my first tentative sigh of relief -- he had a chance of
living a normal life.

It was only then that I began to focus attention back to the cause of
Connor's condition, and listened with interest to the congressional hearings
on autism in April, spurred by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the
Committee on Government Reform. Burton had almost lost his granddaughter to
anaphylactic shock after her DPT vaccination, and lost his grandson to
autism within a week of the child's receiving 11 vaccines administered in a
single office visit.

I read the media coverage, too, most of it from medical professionals who
pitied Burton's situation, but tended to dismiss him with red herrings,
"out-sensationalizing" Burton with claims that not vaccinating children
would lead to outbreaks of life-threatening diseases. (A recent Newsweek
story does this too, ending on the note: "Autism aside, the measles virus
can kill.")

But Burton wasn't interested in eradicating the vaccine program, just in
getting some answers about the rise in autism. He asked CDC representatives
about their investigations of the Brick, N.J., township where the autism
rate was dramatically higher even than the rising national average. He
wondered aloud about California Department of Developmental Services
statistics, now replicated in many states, that reported a 273 percent
increase in autistic kids in the school districts.

Autism was an epidemic, Burton insisted to the CDC. What are you doing about
it?

The vaccination issue had come up many times in online chats about autism,
but I didn't think it applied to me. Unlike many autistic kids, Connor was
not whisked away to the emergency room after his MMR (mumps, measles and
rubella) vaccination for seizures; he didn't "turn" autistic within hours of
his DPT. He had a few mild reactions, nothing more.

But I didn't discount the parents' claims: I knew these parents personally
and respected their judgment. Many were doctors or research professionals
themselves. The only thing that connected a lot of us was a common history
of chronic infections, mainly ear infections, and consistent doses of
antibiotics.

I decided to attend a conference on autism and learn more about the
biological research.

Before I left I went through Connor's photo album. I did this soon after he
was diagnosed, but perhaps I was too close to him and too ignorant of autism
to recognize dramatic changes. This time, I saw it: Connor at 11 months,
smiling for the camera, looking into his daddy's eyes, touching his mommy's
hair. Connor on his first birthday, after his morning visit to the doctor's
office and MMR vaccination, no longer looking at anyone, no longer smiling.

And perhaps the most revealing picture: Connor walking on his toes, one of
the most common behaviors in autism. Within a day he had changed.
The conference speakers presented the theory that autism was part of a
spectrum of related immune disorders on the rise in children. The immune
dysfunction in the body was triggered by reactions to multiple vaccines,
either an ingredient in the vaccines themselves or the accumulated damage of
multiple vaccines to the immune system. The body reacted by attacking its
own cells, an "auto-immune" response, with reactions in the body ranging
from mild allergies and behavioral changes to severe neurological damage
such as autism and seizure disorders.

This evidence made a lot of sense to me because I was seeing these kids with
my own eyes everyday -- friends of mine whose kids were prone to severe
allergies, asthma, attention and learning problems, all with no family
history. When I was growing up, there was always one kid in the classroom
who was allergic to eggs, who had circles under his eyes and pale skin. I
never saw an autistic kid at all. Now I look around and see sick kids
everywhere.

Dr. Andy Wakefield's presentation was particularly compelling. A respected
gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he had been minding
his own business studying inflammatory bowel disease and Crone's disease
when he encountered something very curious that he hadn't seen before. When
he tested the growing number of autistic children who had come in with bowel
problems, he noticed that their GI systems were damaged as if they'd been
diseased for years.

Wakefield listened to parents about the late onset of symptoms, the similar
stories of regression and the parents' belief that vaccine damage may have
caused the problem. When he ran more tests on the children he found measles
virus in their GI tracts, where it wasn't supposed to be. He published
preliminary findings in a respected British medical journal, the Lancet, and
immediately came under fire from colleagues in the U.S. and UK.

As I listened to the evidence Wakefield had gathered, I looked around at the
other parents. There was no commonality among us -- we were of all races and
ethnic backgrounds and geographically spread out. A few of us had a genetic
history of autism or allergies but most of us didn't.

If you controlled for all of these factors, what common link was there?
Controlling for genetics, allergy histories in families and environmental
toxins from varied geography, there was only one candidate left that applied
to all of us -- a mandated vaccine program. Industrialized countries like
the U.S., the UK and Canada were experiencing this tremendous rise in autism
and other neurological disorders. And these were the same countries where
modern medicine flourished.

Interestingly, Japan didn't figure among the other countries' high increase,
and had withdrawn the MMR in 1993 because of concerns about adverse
reactions. I started to become uneasy.

"I'm going to ask everyone a question," said the conference host after
Wakefield's talk. "How many of you here believe your children have been
damaged by vaccines?"

Seventy-five percent of the attendees stood up and raised their hands. One
woman a few rows behind me was crying, and I knew intuitively that her faith
in the medical establishment had finally crumbled. Her suffering was
genuine; she sobbed quietly. When I looked back, she was embarrassed,
covering her face with her hand.

But I was moved by her anguish, her private suffering, and I relived for a
moment my own struggles since Connor's diagnosis. The long nights of guilt I
felt as a mother, constantly wondering what I had done wrong to give him
autism; the long days of research to find a cure -- the doctors told me to
put him in an institution, but I wasn't going to leave him; the countless
doctor visits and tests Connor bravely endured without understanding why he
was hurting or receiving little relief.

And finally -- unsurprisingly -- I was overwhelmed with rage. I felt it
building within me and it was like nothing I'd experienced before. I knew
very clearly at that moment that I had crossed over to the other side, that
I was convinced my son was a cash cow for an industry that tested its
products in production rather than the lab, motivated by $2 billion per year
in profits, no different in its potential for corruption than any other
industry.

There were no higher standards in medicine than in any other business -- the
rule of caveat emptor applied to vaccines as surely as it applied to any
other consumer product. I could not trust the FDA and the CDC to protect me
from pharmaceutical companies that wanted to get their products to market
with as little testing as possible and to promote the repeated use of their
products in order to maintain their monopoly under the guise of the public
good.

I don't have a medical degree, but I have learned how to be a thoughtful
medical consumer. Connor's up for his mandated boosters next year. I know
now that he can have a simple blood test of his antibody titers, which
measures his antibodies and confirms that he has the protection he needs
against disease. I had the blood test done and he's protected.

There's no medical exemption from these boosters in my state for "sufficient
protection based on antibody titers," so I'll have to use a religious
exemption instead. I've accepted that there is no binding contract between
me and the agencies and companies that purport to protect my child. But my
bond with Connor remains, my responsibility as his mother expanding to
include advocacy -- even activism -- along with love.

About the writer:
Lesli Mitchell is a writer and editor who specializes in education and
technology. Her children's book about autism, "Party Train!," will be
published in September by DRL Press.
************************************************************

http://www.autisminfo.com/    middlebrooks@cfl.rr.com

6-Year Anniversary!
As the Summer of 2004 approaches, AutismInfo has surpassed 1 million
visitors!

Since inception, in November of 1998, AutismInfo.com has grown to become one
of the most popular, and often visited autism sites on the internet.

Founded by Merritt Island, Florida residents Jenny and Brad Middlebrook, the
Site provides information on autism treatments and therapies to parents,
teachers, therapists and doctors. Brad Middlebrook describes one goal of
"providing balanced information to parents of newly diagnosed kids."

To date, the site, maintained from the Middlebrook's home in Merritt Island,
Florida, has answered over 2,000 email questions from persons around the
world. "We have provided information to parents in Kenya, Russia, Singapore
and around the United States." Middlebrook says, "we try to update the site
daily, and answer email questions the same day as we receive them.

The site is an informational site dedicated to providing current and useful
information on autism, and does not raise money or revenues from
advertising. The layout, site design and maintenance are done by Brad
Middlebrook.

The Middlebrooks are parents of a seven year-old child with autism. Their
daughter, who attends a small private school with a school aid, is
performing age-appropriatly in academics. The Middlebrook's plan on her
going to second grade next year independently.

http://www.gnd.org/autism/overview.htm

Overview of Autism/PDD
The Clinical Evaluation and Research Treatment Options©
By:  Jeff Bradstreet, M.D., FAAFP
Practicing in Research and Treatment of Autism and Related Disorders
Creation's Own Corporation® & The Good News Doctor Inc.®
The International Child Development Resource Center

The Good News Doctor Foundation  1-321-953-0278
1688 W. Hibiscus Blvd.  Melbourne, FL 32901 info@gnd.org

         This information is designed for use by researchers and parents
interested in autism and PDD. I have included numerous abstracts so you or
your treating physician can judge the reasoning behind my approach to this
very complicated disorder. I believe in evidence-based medicine and after
you read this, you should hopefully see there is abundant evidence in the
medical literature to support a biological approach to autism treatment. We
still have much to learn and daily I am impressed by how much individual
variation there is in this disorder/disorders. Autism may be a symptom of
several different biological entities which merely present as a similar
behavioral complex in early child development.

A biological treatment plan in no way detracts from the very important
issues of behavioral therapy. I use an analogy of computer software and
hardware in helping parents understand this.  In some ways you can think of
the biology of autism as the hardware problems that need mechanical repair.
The behavioral, speech and sensory issues are the software of autism.
Repairing these "software" problems requires a good team approach to
reprogram the neuronal networks, which were corrupted by the biological
disorder. I hope that makes this complex issue somewhat more understandable.

While we currently refer to the social, behavioral and language
abnormalities as autism, a more accurate diagnosis for most children with
this disorder would be autoimmune or dysimmune encephalopathy.....
************************************************************

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1165
short review: research on aspartame (methanol, formaldehyde, formic acid)
toxicity: Murray 2005.06.18 rmforall

Rich Murray, MA  Room For All  rmforall@comcast.net  505-501-2298
1943 Otowi Road    Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505   USA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/messages
group with 187 members, 1,174 posts in a public, searchable archive

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1071
research on aspartame (methanol, formaldehyde, formic acid) toxicity: Murray
2004.04.29 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1143
methanol (formaldehyde, formic acid) disposition: Bouchard M et al, full
plain text, 2001: substantial sources are degradation of fruit pectins,
liquors, aspartame, smoke: Murray 2005.04.02 rmforall

Fully 11% of aspartame is methanol--  1,120 mg aspartame  in 2 L diet soda,
almost six 12-oz cans,  gives 123 mg methanol (wood alcohol).   If 30% of
the methanol is turned into formaldehyde, the amount of formaldehyde is 18
times the USA EPA limit for daily formaldehyde in drinking water, 2 mg in 2
L water.

Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, Canderel, E951), after eight years of
controversy, was suddenly and capriciously approved by a new FDA
commissioner,  Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr,  just appointed by President Reagan, a
pharmacologist who had been in office less than three months and had little
background in food additives, in July 1981, overturning the vote of his own
Scientific Board of Inquiry.

Aspartame is made of phenylalanine (50% by weight) and aspartic acid (39%),
both ordinary amino acids, bound loosely together by methanol (wood alcohol,
11%).   The readily released methanol from aspartame is within hours turned
by the liver into formaldehyde and then formic acid, both potent, cumulative
toxins.

A team in a Searle Co. lab, led by J.A. Oppermann, proved that 30% of the
methanol in aspartame fed to rats remained, indubitably as toxic products of
formaldehyde and formic acid in all tissues (1973, 1976).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/925
aspartame puts formaldehyde adducts into tissues, Part 1/2
full text, Trocho & Alemany 1998.06.26: Murray 2002.12.22 rmforall

This was confirmed by an expert team at the University of Barcelona (Trocho,
Alemany et al, 1998):
"...the binding of methanol-derived carbon to tissue proteins was
widespread, affecting all systems, fully reaching even sensitive targets
such as the brain and retina...These are indeed extremely high levels for
adducts of formaldehyde, a substance responsible for chronic deleterious
effects (33), that has also been considered carcinogenic (33,47)."

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1016
President Bush & formaldehyde (aspartame) toxicity: Ramazzini Foundation
carcinogenicity results Dec 2002: Soffritti: Murray 2003.08.03 rmforall

p. 88 "The sweetening agent aspartame hydrolyzes in the gastrointestinal
tract to become free methyl alcohol, which is metabolized in the liver to
formaldehyde, formic acid, and CO2. (11)"
Medinsky MA & Dorman DC. 1994; Assessing risks of low-level methanol
exposure. CIIT Act. 14: 1-7.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2002 Dec; 982: 87-105.
Results of long-term experimental studies on the carcinogenicity of
formaldehyde and acetaldehyde in rats.   M. Soffritti et al.  Cancer
Research Center, European Ramazzini Foundation for Oncology and
Environmental Sciences, Bologna, Italy. crcfr@tin.it

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1077
eight depressed people react strongly to aspartame, Prof. Ralph G. Walton,
MD, 1993 double-blind study, full text: Murray 2004.04.26 rmforall
Despite the very small number of subjects, the results were dramatic and
statistically significant.  The eight depressed patients reported with
aspartame, compared to placebo, much higher levels of nervousness, trouble
remembering, nausea, depression, temper, and malaise.

Many scientific studies and case histories report:  * headaches  * many body
and joint pains (or burning, tingling, tremors, twitching, spasms, cramps,
stiffness, numbness, difficulty swallowing)  *  fever, fatigue, swollen
glands  * "mind fog", "feel unreal", poor memory, confusion, anxiety,
irritability, depression, mania, insomnia, dizziness, slurred speech, sexual
problems,  poor vision, hearing (deafness, tinnitus), or taste  * red face,
itching, rashes, allergic dermatitis, hair loss, burning eyes or throat, dry
eyes or mouth, mouth sores, burning tongue  * obesity, bloating, edema,
anorexia, poor appetite or excessive hunger or thirst    * breathing
problems, shortness of breath * nausea, diarrhea or constipation  * coldness
* sweating  * racing heart, low or high blood pressure, erratic blood sugar
levels  * hypothryroidism or hyperthyroidism  * seizures  * birth defects
*  brain cancers  * addiction  * aggrivates diabetes, autism, allergies,
lupus, ADHD, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical
sensitivity, multiple sclerosis, pseudotumor cerebri and interstitial
cystitis (bladder pain).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/927
Donald Rumsfeld, 1977 head of Searle Corp., got aspartame FDA approval:
Turner: Murray 2002.12.23 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1045
http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/scf2002-response.htm
Mark Gold exhaustively critiques European Commission Scientific Committee
on Food re aspartame ( 2002.12.04 ): 59 pages, 230 references

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1131
genotoxicity of aspartame in human lymphocytes 2004.07.29 full plain text,
Rencuzogullari E et al, Cukurova University, Adana, Turkey 2004 Aug: Murray
2004.11.06 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1088
Murray, full plain text & critique: chronic aspartame in rats affects
memory, brain cholinergic receptors, and brain chemistry, Christian B,
McConnaughey M et al, 2004 May: 2004.06.05 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1067
eyelid contact dermatitis by formaldehyde from aspartame, AM Hill & DV
Belsito, Nov 2003: Murray 2004.03.30 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1155
continuing aspartame debate in British Medical Journal, John Biffra, Bob
Dowling, Nick Finer, Ian J Gordon: Murray 2005.02.09 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1065
politicians and celebrities hooked on diet sodas (aspartame): Murray
2004.03.24 rmforall

http://google.com  gives 585,000 websites for "aspartame" , with the top 7
of 10 listings being anti-aspartame, while
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed   lists 786 aspartame items.
************************************************************

Additional material:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/835
ATSDR: EPA limit 1 ppm formaldehyde in drinking water July 1999:
Murray 2002.05.30 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/782
RTM: Smith, Terpening, Schmidt, Gums:
full text: aspartame, MSG, fibromyalgia 2002.01.17 rmforall
Jerry D Smith, Chris M Terpening, Siegfried OF Schmidt, and John G Gums
Relief of Fibromyalgia Symptoms Following
Discontinuation of Dietary Excitotoxins.
The Annals of Pharmacotherapy 2001; 35(6): 702-706.
Malcolm Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Gainesville, FL, USA.
BACKGROUND: Fibromyalgia is a common rheumatologic disorder that is
often difficult to treat effectively.
CASE SUMMARY: Four patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome
for two to 17 years are described.
All had undergone multiple treatment
modalities with limited success. All had complete, or nearly complete,
resolution of their symptoms within months after eliminating monosodium
glutamate (MSG) or MSG plus aspartame from their diet.
All patients were women with multiple comorbidities
prior to elimination of MSG.
All have had recurrence of symptoms whenever MSG is ingested.

Siegfried O. Schmidt, MD  Asst. Clinical Prof.  siggy@shands.ufl.edu
Community Health and Family Medicine, U. Florida, Gainesville, FL
Shands Hospital West Oak Clinic Gainesville, FL 32608-3629
352-376-5071

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/915
formaldehyde toxicity:  Thrasher & Kilburn: Shaham: EPA: Gold:
Wilson: CIIN: Murray 2002.12.12 rmforall

Thrasher (2001): "The major difference is that the Japanese demonstrated
the incorporation of FA and its metabolites into the placenta and fetus.
The quantity of radioactivity remaining in maternal and fetal tissues
at 48 hours was 26.9% of the administered dose." [ Ref. 14-16 ]

Arch Environ Health 2001 Jul-Aug; 56(4): 300-11.
Embryo toxicity and teratogenicity of formaldehyde. [100 references]
Thrasher JD, Kilburn KH.  toxicology@drthrasher.org
Sam-1 Trust, Alto, New Mexico, USA.
http://www.drthrasher.org/formaldehyde_embryo_toxicity.html   full text

http://www.drthrasher.org/formaldehyde_1990.html  full text   Jack Dwayne
Thrasher, Alan Broughton, Roberta Madison. Immune activation and
autoantibodies in humans with long-term inhalation exposure to formaldehyde.
Archives of Environmental Health. 1990; 45: 217-223.  "Immune activation,
autoantibodies, and anti-HCHO-HSA antibodies are associated with long-term
formaldehyde inhalation."  PMID: 2400243

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/864
Butchko, Tephly, McMartin: Alemany: aspartame formaldehyde
adducts in rats: Murray 2002.09.08 rmforall
Prof. Alemany vigorously affirms the validity of the Trocho study
against criticism:
Butchko, HH et al [24 authors], Aspartame: review of safety.
Regul. Toxicol. Pharmacol. 2002 April 1; 35 (2 Pt 2): S1-93, review
available for $35, [an industry paid organ].  Butchko:
"When all the research on aspartame, including evaluations in both the
premarketing and postmarketing periods, is examined as a whole, it is
clear that aspartame is safe, and there are no unresolved questions
regarding its safety under conditions of intended use."

In the same report, Schiffman concludes on page S49, not citing any
research after 1997, "Thus, the weight of the scientific evidence
indicates that aspartame does not cause headache."
Dr. Susan S. Schiffman, Dept. of Psychiatry, Duke University
sss@acpub.duke.edu    919-684-3303, 660-5657

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RTP ties to industry criticized by CSPI: Murray: 2002.12.09 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/846
aspartame in Merck Maxalt-MLT worsens migraine,
AstraZeneca Zomig, Eli Lilly Zyprexa,
J&J Merck Pepcid AC (Famotidine 10mg) Chewable Tab,
Pfizer Cool Mint Listerine Pocketpaks: Murray 2002.07.16 rmforall

Migraine MLT-Down: an unusual presentation of migraine
in patients with aspartame-triggered headaches.
Newman LC, Lipton RB  Headache 2001 Oct; 41(9): 899-901.
[ Merck 10-mg Maxalt-MLT, for migraine, has 3.75 mg aspartame,
while 12 oz diet soda has 200 mg. ]
Headache Institute, St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital Center, New York, NY
Department of Neurology   newmanache@aol.com
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY
Innovative Medical Research   RLipton@IMRInc.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/855
Blumenthall & Vance: aspartame chewing gum headaches Nov 1997:
Murray 2002.07.28 rmforall

Harvey J. Blumenthal, MD, Dwight A Vance, RPh
Chewing Gum Headaches. Headache 1997 Nov-Dec; 37(10): 665-6.
Department of Neurology, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine,
Tulsa, USA.   neurotulsa@aol.com
Aspartame, a popular dietetic sweetener, may provoke headache in some
susceptible individuals. Herein, we describe three cases of young women
with migraine who reported their headaches could be provoked by chewing
gum sweetened with aspartame. [ 6-8 mg aspartame per stick chewing gum ]

Finally, an intripid and much published team in Japan has found DNA damage
in 8 tissues from single non-lethal doses of aspartame (near-significant
high levels of DNA damage in 5 tissues) and many other additives in groups
of just 4 mice:

Mutat Res 2002 Aug 26; 519(1-2): 103-19
The comet assay with 8 mouse organs: results with 39 currently used food
additives.
Sasaki YF, Kawaguchi S, Kamaya A, Ohshita M, Kabasawa K, Iwama K,
Taniguchi K, Tsuda S.
Laboratory of Genotoxicity, Faculty of Chemical and Biological
Engineering, Hachinohe National College of Technology,
Tamonoki Uwanotai 16-1, Aomori 039-1192, Japan.
yfsasaki-c@hachinohe-ct.ac.jp  s.tsuda@iwate-u.ac.jp

We determined the genotoxicity of 39 chemicals currently in use as food
additives.
They fell into six categories-dyes, color fixatives and
preservatives, preservatives, antioxidants, fungicides, and sweeteners.

We tested groups of four male ddY mice once orally with each additive at
up to 0.5xLD(50) or the limit dose (2000mg/kg) and performed the comet
assay on the glandular stomach, colon, liver, kidney, urinary bladder, lung,
brain, and bone marrow 3 and 24 h after treatment.

Of all the additives, dyes were the most genotoxic.
Amaranth, Allura Red, New Coccine, Tartrazine, Erythrosine, Phloxine, and
Rose Bengal induced dose-related DNA damage
in the glandular stomach, colon and/or urinary bladder.
All seven dyes induced DNA damage in the gastrointestinal organs at a low
dose (10 or 100mg/kg).

Among them, Amaranth, Allura Red, New Coccine, and Tartrazine induced
DNA damage in the colon at close to the acceptable daily intakes (ADIs).

Two antioxidants (butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated
hydroxytoluene (BHT)), three fungicides (biphenyl, sodium
o-phenylphenol, and thiabendazole), and four sweeteners (sodium
cyclamate, saccharin, sodium saccharin, and sucralose) also induced DNA
damage in gastrointestinal organs.

Based on these results, we believe that more extensive assessment of
food additives in current use is warranted.  PMID: 12160896

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24 recent formaldehyde toxicity [Comet assay] reports:
Murray 2002.12.31 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/935
Comet assay finds DNA damage from sucralose, cyclamate, saccharin in
mice: Sasaki YF & Tsuda S  Aug 2002: Murray 2003.01.01 rmforall
[ Also borderline evidence, in this pilot study of 39 food additives,
using test groups of 4 mice, for DNA damage from for stomach, colon,
liver, bladder, and lung 3 hr after oral dose of 2000 mg/kg aspartame--
a very high dose.]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/961
genotoxins, Comet assay in mice: Ace-K, stevia fine; aspartame poor;
sucralose, cyclamate, saccharin bad: Y.F. Sasaki Aug 2002:
Murray 2003.01.27 rmforall   [A detailed look at the data]     ]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/857
www.dorway.com: original documents and long reviews of flaws in
aspartame toxicity research: Murray 2002.07.31 rmforall

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Samuels: Strong: Roberts: Gold:  flaws in double-blind studies re
aspartame and MSG toxicity: Murray 2002.08.01 rmforall

"Survey of aspartame studies: correlation of outcome and funding
sources," 1998, unpublished:   http://www.dorway.com/peerrev.html
Walton found 166 separate published studies in the peer reviewed
medical literature, which had relevance for questions of human safety.
The 74 studies funded by industry all (100%) attested to aspartame's
safety, whereas of the 92 non-industry funded studies, 84 (91%)
identified a problem. Six of the seven non-industry funded studies
that were favorable to aspartame safety were from the FDA, which
has a public record that shows a strong pro-industry bias.
Ralph G. Walton, MD, Prof. of Clinical Psychology, Northeastern Ohio
Universities, College of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry, Youngstown,
OH 44501, Chairman, The Center for Behavioral Medicine,
Northside Medical Center, 500 Gypsy Lane, P.O. Box 240 Youngstown,
OH 44501    330-740-3621    rwalton193@aol.com
http://www.neoucom.edu/DEPTS/Psychiatry/walton.htm

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Gold: Koehler: Walton: Van Den Eeden: Leon:
aspartame toxicity: Murray 2001.06.04 rmforall   four double-blind studies

Headache 1988 Feb; 28(1): 10-4
The effect of aspartame on migraine headache.
Koehler SM, Glaros A     PMID: 3277925, UI: 88138777
Shirley  M. Koehler, PhD   904-858-7651   skoehler@brookshealth.org
http://www.med.umich.edu/abcn/alpha/alpha-K.html#Koehler
Alan Glaros  glarosa@umkc.edu  816-235-2074

They conducted a double-blind study of patients, ages 18-55, who had
a medical diagnosis of classical migraines (normally having 1-3
migraines in 4-weeks), who were not on medications (other than
analgesics), and who suspected that aspartame had a negative effect on
their migraine headaches. The subjects were given 1200 mg daily,
aspartame or placebo, for four weeks, about 17 mg/kg.  The placebo
group had no increase in headaches.  Approximately half of the subjects
(5 of 11) who took aspartame had a large, statistically significant
(p = 0.02), increase in migraine headache frequency, but not in
intensity or duration, compared to baseline or placebo.  Only 11 of
25 subjects completed the program: 8 dropped out, 4 began new
medications, 2 had incomplete records.  They were at home.
Since 1/3 of the subjects dropped out, they may have been choosing
to avoid headaches-- were they unpaid?  To achieve statistical
signifance with only 11 subjects hints that the incidence rate from
aspartame is very high, about 1/2,  for migraine cases who believe
that they are hurt by aspartame.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1077
eight depressed people react strongly to aspartame, Prof. Ralph G. Walton,
MD, 1993 double-blind study, full text: Murray 2004.04.26 rmforall

Walton, RG, "Adverse reactions to aspartame: double-blind challenge in
patients from a vulnerable population," 1993,  with Robert Hudak and
Ruth J. Green-Waite,  Biological Psychiatry, 34 (1), 13-17.
Ralph G. Walton, MD, Prof. of Clinical Psychology, Northeastern Ohio
Universities, College of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry, Youngstown,
OH 44501, Chairman, The Center for Behavioral Medicine,
Northside Medical Center, 500 Gypsy Lane, P.O. Box 240 Youngstown,
OH 44501    330-740-3621    rwalton193@aol.com
http://www.neoucom.edu/DEPTS/Psychiatry/walton.htm

Eight depressed patients, ages 24-60, and five non-depressed controls,
ages 24-56, employed at the hospital, were given for 7 days either
aspartame or a placebo, and then after a 3 day break, given the
opposite.  Each got 2100 mg  aspartame daily, 30 mg/kg bodyweight,
equal to 10-12 cans of diet soda daily, about a gallon.  Despite the
very small number of subjects, the results were dramatic and
statistically significant.  The eight depressed patients reported with
aspartame, compared to placebo, much higher levels of nervousness,
trouble remembering, nausea, depression, temper, and malaise. (For each
symptom, p<0.01)  The five normals did not report strong enough
differences between aspartame and placebo to be significant.
Initially, the study was to be on a group of 40, but was halted by the
Institutional Review Board because of severe reactions among 3 of the
depressed patients.

Again, statistical significance with only 8 depressed patients:
"In this study, patients most often began to report significant
symptoms after day 2 or 3."  The incidence rate is very high,
indeed, about 1/3.  The most common symptoms are entirely typical
of thousands of case histories.

Stephen K. Van Den Eeden, T.D. Koepsell, W.T. Longstreth, Jr,
G. van Belle, J.R. Daling, B. McKnight, "Aspartame ingestion and
headaches: a randomized crossover trial," 1994, Neurology, 44, 1787-93
Steven K. Van Den Eeden,PhD  550-450-2202  skv@dor.kaiser.org
Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program
3505 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94611-5714
http://www.dor.kaiser.org/dorhtml/investigators/Stephen_Van_Den_Eeden.html

In their introduction, they comment:

"In addition, the FDA had received over 5,000 complaints as of July,
1991 in a passive surveillance system to monitor adverse side effects.
(17)  Neurologic problems constitute the primary complaints in these
and several other case series, with headaches accounting for
18 to 45 %,depending on the case series reported. (17-19)"

Subjects, ages 18-57, were recruited who believed they got headaches
from aspartame, but were otherwise mentally and physically healthy.
They were paid $ 15 total, and were at home. Of the 44 subjects, 32
contributed data to the 38-day trials: a week of inert placebo, a week
of either aspartame or placebo, followed by a week of the opposite, and
then this two-week cycle repeated.  The daily dose was about 30 mg/kg.
"The proportion of days subjects reported having a headache was
higher during aspartame treatment compared with placebo treatment
(aspartame = 0.33, placebo = 0.24; p = 0.04) (table 5)".
Of the 12 subjects not included in the data, 7 reported adverse
symptoms before withdrawing.

Again, statistical significance with a moderate number of healthy
subjects, willing to be recruited by a newspaper ad, who believed
aspartame hurt them.  The number of headaches for each subject
for each treatment week are given: it appears that 4 subjects
had the strongest increase in headaches from the run-in week
or placebo week to their first week on aspartame, jumping from 0 to 5,
1 to 6, 1 to 4, 0 to 5 headaches per week.  So, about 4 of the 44
healthy people recruited for the study, who believed aspartame hurt
them, had a stong increase in headaches from the first week of daily
asparame exposure, while 7 reported adverse symptoms before leaving,
a total of 11 out of 44, an incidence ratio of 1/4.

This is sky high, if we consider that, if the incidence ratio for the
about two hundred million users in the USA is 1 of 100, that is 2
million cases.  It is plausible that the incidence ratio lies between 1
and 10 out of 100 for continuous daily exposure.  These three flames
should have set off alarm bells, with extensive follow-up studies and
much more careful study of thousands of case histories.  But these
little flares were adroitly smothered by thick blankets of industry
funded fluff:

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Simmons: Gold: Schiffman: Spiers:
aspartame toxicity: Murray 2001.06.04 rmforall    two double-blind studies
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