Fwd: Nutrasweet

From:wabrams1@me.com To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-05-07 02:42 Subject: Fwd: Nutrasweet

FYI.. per our conversation on Nutrasweet (just read last week that Diet Pepsi is taking out Nutrasweet) I will send you info on thimerosal tomorrow xo w Begin forwarded message: > From: Don Kennedy <kennedyd@stanford.edu> > Subject: Re: Nutrasweet > Date: April 23, 2013 at 11:52:42 AM CDT > To: wendy Abrams <wabrams1@me.com> > > I will see if I can get Peggy onto the Nutrasweet mess. Rumsfeld has a lot to answer for in his next life. > > I will also be thinking about new ways to get you out here more often!! > > xo > > Don > On Apr 22, 2013, at 10:14 PM, wendy Abrams wrote: > >> >> Don >> Here was the article you sent me a while ago regarding Nutrasweet and how it came to market under questionable (at best) circumstances. >> The current proposal from the Dairy lobby is to put Nutrasweet in the chocolate milk we serve to school children. Needless to say, I think we >> should stop this proposal from moving forward. >> >> I hope you can help by weighing in with Peggy. >> >> best >> w >> >> Begin forwarded message: >> >>> From: Don Kennedy <kennedyd@stanford.edu> >>> Subject: Re: Nutrasweet >>> Date: March 11, 2013 3:39:37 PM CDT >>> To: wendy Abrams <wabrams1@me.com> >>> >>> Hi Wendy -- >>> >>> I have been in an active teaching spell at the GSB and I apologize for missing an earlier email of yours!! The whole sweeteners issue has interested me since my early time at FDA when the crisis du jour was about saccharin, which was causing bladder cancer in rats (only the males, not the females). After years of debate and Congressional interest it turned out that rats were not an appropriate model for that problem. A little later, still during my time as Commissioner I was called on by Don Rumsfeld, who introduced himself as the CEO of Searle; I got the director of the new drug approval center in the meeting and we told him that we would look carefully at the evidence and rely on our expert committee structure as usual. Aspartame continued to attract concerned critics, and we at FDA saw no resumption of Searle's effort to get it approved. I looked up one piece on that history, which I append below. Not a very nice story. >>> >>> I know the present Commissioner pretty well. I will try to see what I can do on this one. >>> >>> Hope you are well -- here's the story on the later history >>> From Norfolk Genetic Information Network (Taken from Welcome to the Spin Machine by Michael Manville http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/2001/04/biotech/ http://www.freezerbox.com/ ) >>> >>> In 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame's clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it "might induce brain tumors." >>> >>> The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (currently the Secretary of Defense) vow to "call in his markers," to get it approved. >>> >>> On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener, and Reagan's new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision. >>> >>> It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame's favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame. >>> >>> >>> Best >>> Don >>> On Mar 6, 2013, at 10:05 PM, wendy Abrams wrote: >>> >>>> Don >>>> I don't know how much you know about Nutrasweet, but I think it is poison. I drank so much of it in college, I developed exercise induced asthma and severe headaches as a result (both went away when i got off of it.. but if I drink even one ounce, I will have a horrible headache immediately.) Doctors will swear to me it is fine, and I will tell them, maybe i'm the only person in the world who reacts like this, but clearly it affects me, and then they'll tell me again, it is fine. They are so brainwashed by the propaganda, they refuse to believe anything contrary. >>>> >>>> I also have a friend who worked for the researchers at University of Chicago (which has a top rated neurology dept) and the doctors there said when they gave nutrasweet to lab mice, it literally blew holes in their brains. They said they will tell a pregnant woman to drink any amount of alcohol before touching a sip of nutrasweet, it is that bad. >>>> >>>> Today I heard on NPR that due to the concern over obesity in school children, they have decided to replace chocolate milk in school lunches (because kids drink choc vs white milk in a 4 to 1 ratio) so they are replacing the chocolate milk with chocolate milk with Nutrasweet, and insisting that it not be labeled as such because kids don't like to drink something that is labeled low cal. >>>> God forbid they give the kids white milk.. or water to drink. I guess there's not enough power in the water lobby. (Don Rumsfeld was the guy running Searle when they got Nutrasweet approved by FDA... which may explain it.) >>>> >>>> any thoughts on reaching FDA? I believe they are having a public comment period from now until May.. not sure how that works or who to talk to that is truly influential, but I think it is a big deal. >>>> >>>> xo >>>> wendy >>> >> >