In the first installment of a special exposé, HUSTLER’s Science Editor-at-Large Debbie Epstein explains the stomach-turning truth about our food: Chemical companies are adding deadly toxins approved by the government’s supposed safety net.

Article by Science Editor-at-Large Debbie Epstein
for HUSTLER Magazine – July 2009

In the first installment of a special exposé, HUSTLER’s Science Editor-at-Large Debbie Epstein explains the stomach-turning truth about our food: Chemical companies are adding deadly toxins approved by the government’s supposed safety net. 

Our foods are killing us. We all know the Food and Drug Administration is supposed to be responsible for the safety and purity of what we consume. So why does the FDA allow poisons in almost e v e r y f o o d i n America? The short answer is corruption and greed. Pharmaceutical companies, food processors and the FDA are so intertwined, they’ve become a three-headed monster.

Big Pharma, as the drug industry is often called, profits from supplying food additives— sweeteners, hormones, antibiotics, etc. When these substances make us all sick, more profits are derived from the drugs we’re given to treat the sickness. It’s a win-win situation for the pharmaceutical companies; it’s a loselose for the public.

“Big Pharma is evil and runs America,” says Betty Martini, founder of Georgiabased Mission Possible World Health International. Since 1993 she and her watchdog organization have been sounding alarms in 39 countries about chemical poisons. Although Martini has taken heavy criticism for her dramatic pronouncements, most of her research has been substantiated. “The FDA is just Pharma’s branch office in Washington, D.C.,” she scoffs.

Many foods not only cause disease, some, including sugar and sugar substitutes, are addictive. A recent Princeton University study shows that sugar is as habit-forming as hard drugs—an effective way to boost sales. Other additives interact with prescription drugs, such as Parkinson’s medications, even though food additives are by law supposed to be inert. “It takes millions of dollars to fight these people in court when you’re made sick by poisons in food,” Martini says. These cases almost always settle out of court for lack of funds.

Freak Genes and Revolving Doors: Consider how cattle have been genetically altered by being injected with Posilac (a recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH) intended to increase milk production by a gallon a day per cow. This has also benefited the bottom line for Monsanto Company, which developed and originally marketed Posilac. (Monsanto, which racked up $2 billion in profits in 2008, is one of the top polluters in the U.S.)

Posilac—banned in Europe, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Australia—lists 20 possible toxic effects on its label. “It also originally contained a freak gene that produced an unusual and very unstable protein,” says Robert Cohen, founder of the Dairy Education Board. Monsanto fixed that problem, but the toxic effects remained. Milk from cows injected with Posilac has greatly increased levels of the known cancer-causing agent IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1). Milk from dosed cows also contains pus and antibiotics, which explains its “off” taste and shortened shelf life. FDA approval of Posilac in 1993 shows that when it comes to public safety, the behemoth pharmaceutical companies do indeed run the country.

There is a well-oiled revolving door between Big Pharma and the FDA. To illustrate: Monsanto scientist Margaret Miller wrote the report on Posilac. After she left Monsanto to join the FDA, she ended up actually evaluating her own positive report. Not surprisingly, the hormone was approved, freaky gene and all.

Michael Taylor, a second cousin of Tipper Gore, could be the poster boy for revolvingdoor syndrome. He has repeatedly gone back and forth from the FDA (while Monsanto was seeking approval for Posilac) to law firms fighting for the growth hormone’s approval. If President Barack Obama is really on the side of Main Street, why is Michael Taylor involved with the new administration?

Pus on Your Cereal: Many farmers have reported horrible symptoms from Posilac in their cows, particularly mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. To treat the infection, which decreases milk production and creates pus that ends up in the milk, farmers must then purchase and inject more antibiotics. This not only increases antibiotics in the milk, it also helps create drug-resistant organisms.

Monsanto actually sued milk companies that refused to use Posilac in their products and stated so on their labels. Michael Taylor (then at the FDA) signed a federal notice warning grocery stores that they could not label milk as free of genetically altered hormones, squelching the public’s right to know. Taylor’s reasoning: There is “virtually” no difference between dairy products containing Posilac and those without it.

Testifying before an FDA panel in 1999, Robert Cohen pointed out that Congress introduced a bill in 1994 to require mandatory labeling to indicate products with synthetic hormones. But the House Dairy, Livestock and Poultry Subcommittee stalled it. “I investigated the 12 committee members who stopped the bill,” Cohen recalls, “and I found that they collectively took $711,000 in PAC money from Monsanto and other companies.”

Pennsylvania banned mandatory labeling, but rescinded the ban after consumer backlash. Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana and Michigan all have existing or pending laws limiting what labels may say about hormones in milk. “Monsanto is trying to get states to thwart the market from working,” stated Michael Hansen, senior scientist for Consumers Union. “If the market wants blue corn and not yellow, and people want blue, that’s the way the market works.”

In 2008, amid mounting pressure from the public and consumer groups, Monsanto sold Posilac to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. Today 58% of the herds in the U.S. are injected with the genetically altered hormone.

Biochemical Weapons on Every Dinner Table: Just as telling is how the sweetener aspartame, developed by G.D. Searle & Company, got its stamp of approval.

Aspartame—found in NutraSweet, Equal, children’s vitamins and about 6,000 foods and beverages—was classified a potential biochemical warfare weapon by the Pentagon, according to info that reportedly emerged during a U.S. Senate committee hearing on November 3, 1987. Because aspartame tastes sweet and has no calories, it’s used in many diet drinks and foods. But since the artificial sweetener is cheaper than sugar, it’s often used in nondiet foods as well.

Aspartame has been linked to brain cancer, sudden cardiac death, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, bipolar disorder and a menu of behavioral and health conditions. When ingested, the additive breaks down into its three main components, all of which may act as neurotoxins that destroy human cells and organs.

Physician John Olney warned Searle early that aspartic acid, the key component of aspartame, actually caused holes in the brains of mice. Even Searle researcher Ann Reynolds admitted to neurotoxicity in her study. Searle ignored the warning and omitted several negative studies when the company submitted data to the FDA. For several years the FDA did its job, refusing to approve aspartame. At one point the agency’s task force on aspartame safety damned Searle’s official studies as “incredibly sloppy.”

Although it’s been removed from the market in Romania, and the European Food Safety Authority is currently considering a total ban, aspartame continues to poison the rest of the world’s population. The story of how aspartame was pushed through the approval process is a classic case of money over morality.

Rumsfeld’s Plague: “Big Pharma has no scruples,” says Betty Martini. She calls aspartame’s approval and marketing “the worst case of corruption in the history of the world. It has led to mass poisoning of Americans and people in 100 other countries.” A long line of corrupt judges, politicians and FDA officials is the reason you can put Equal in your morning coffee. UPI reported that ten federal officials involved in approving aspartame ended up in jobs at or connected to the manufacturer.

“Searle paid off everybody, and everyone in the company knew it was harmful,” Martini says. “I even interviewed Jan Kinnard, the temp hired by Searle to shred studies that would have kept it off the market.”

In 2008 Kinnard stated, “The results were outrageous. This stuff killed everything it touched.” Presented with evidence of aspartame toxicity, the FDA at first denied approval of the chemical. In desperation, Searle hired Donald Rumsfeld as its CEO in 1977. Rumsfeld had been President Gerald Ford’s secretary of defense and would later hold the same post under George W. Bush. He also worked for Richard Nixon in various capacities. In 1971 the famous White House tapes recorded Nixon saying, “He’s a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that.”

According to The Ecologist, an independent environmental affairs magazine published in England, when Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle, he vowed at a sales meeting to “call in his markers” to get aspartame approved. One day after President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, Searle reapplied to the FDA for aspartame approval.

Reagan fired the FDA Commissioner and appointed Arthur Hull Hayes Jr., who was later forced to resign for taking free rides on private jets belonging to General Foods, a major buyer of aspartame. Hayes returned to private life and eventually ended up doing PR work for Searle and Monsanto. But before heading to the private sector, he approved aspartame over the objections of the FDA’s Public Board of Inquiry. Rumsfeld himself made a reported $12 million when Monsanto purchased Searle in 1985.

Aspartame would never have been approved without Rumsfeld’s influence-peddling, says Martini. “That’s why we call it Rumsfeld’s Plague.”

“Who Put Pubic Hair on My Diet Coke?” An avalanche of complaints about aspartame soon hit the FDA. Leading the move- ment to ban it were Dr. John Olney and former “Nader Raider” James Turner, an attorney and consumer advocate with D.C.-based Swankin & Turner. Because the FDA simply ignored the complaints (even those of its own scientists), Olney and Turner took their case to the justice system.

The courts have proven to be as crooked as the FDA and Searle, however. “Complain about aspartame and you might just as well report a mugging to the Mafia,” says Martini.

Clarence Thomas had risen to associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when it refused to consider arguments about aspartame safety in a case filed by the Community Nutrition Institute and other consumer groups. Thomas had once been an attorney at—guess where?—Monsanto.

Meanwhile, the data continue to pile up against the additive. Aspartame’s catastrophic effects are detailed in respected physician Russell Blaylock’s Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. His book sheds light on various chemicals that stimulate the death of nerve cells and cause DNA damage. Brain cancer, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, autism, attention disorders and Alzheimer’s are just some of the afflictions that have escalated since aspartame appeared on the market. Dr. Blaylock also reports that drinking just one diet soda a day can lead to aspartame poisoning because the excitotoxin accumulates in the body.

In Deadly Deception: The Story of Aspartame, Mary Nash Stoddard (of the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network) includes an entire chapter just on the dangers to pilots who drink beverages laced with the additive. They have been reported to lose consciousness from aspartame poisoning.

FDA—the Food and Death Administration: “This particularly nasty substance should never have been approved for human use,” Dr. Blaylock has written. “In fact, had it not been for some fancy footwork by those in power in the FDA, it never would have.”

In 1987 FDA toxicologist Dr. Jacqueline Verrett testified before a U.S. Senate committee, disclosing that aspartame’s safety was never proven at the FDA. Verrett said she and other regulators were pressured to approve data that were “a disaster.” Dr. Verrett, who wrote Eating May Be Hazardous to Your Health: The Case Against Food Additives, called for terminating the FDA. She stated, “When science and the public interest win out, it is invariably only after the government has been pushed to the wall.” 

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You may purchase the July 2009 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) from HustlerMagazine.com.

Debbie Epstein is an award-winning journalist who has written extensively for medical and consumer publications. She and her husband reside in Ringwood, New Jersey.

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