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("Quid coniuratio est?")
[The following is a transcript of a recorded phone message put out by a group in Chicago called "Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts [CCCC]." (312) 731-1100 and (312) 731-1505.]
Hi! Sherman Skolnick, Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts, 9800 South Oglesby.
We talked with Barbara A. Mullarkey, a journalist and activist in the Chicago area critical of Aspartame -- called "NutraSweet".
BARBARA MULLARKEY: Well Aspartame is a generic name for NutraSweet the brand, a product of G.D. Searle that, NutraSweet, now owned by Monsanto out of St. Louis, Missouri. And Aspartame is a sugar substitute, an artificial sweetener. And its ingredients are causing a little bit of problems in the country. And its ingredients, methyl-alcohol, phenylalanine, and aspartic acid have combined and they're in many products, ranging from diet drinks to sugar-free products in things like gum, antibiotics, puddings. You name it, it's an in-everything, everywhere product.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: The public generally doesn't know about it, especially in the bigger cities. (Maybe in smaller communities.) What are some of the complaints that people voluntarily make to the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] -- not solicited complaints, but hundreds if not thousands of complaints about what happens when they drink a can of diet pop. Tell us a little bit about that.
BARBARA MULLARKEY: There are over 10 thousand complaints now at the FDA. And, as you say, they're volunteered: so it's just the tip of the iceberg. Because when you have somebody experience some symptoms (there's 92 of them now recorded at the FDA), you certainly don't want to pick up the phone and call the FDA, you want to get to the nearest hospital or call your health professional.
Some of the symptoms range from migraines -- which there has been a 60 percent increase in the United States, from 1980 to 1989, of migraines -- and then there's things like memory loss, depression, seizures, vision problems.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: There's a possibility that a certain amount of violence may be aggravated: in other words, people become possibly more aggressive after using Aspartame/NutraSweet?
BARBARA MULLARKEY: Well some of the researcher scientists are saying that definitely, there's a brain transmitter -- serotonin -- that is lowered with Aspartame ingestion with carbohydrates. And when you have a lowering of serotonin, there's an increase in aggressiveness and violence. And males have a lower serotonin than females. So scientists and researchers are wondering: is the increase in violence in the country possibly due to this product?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: When you said "92", you don't mean 92 complaints, you mean 92 different types of problems, right?
BARBARA MULLARKEY: 92 symptoms.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: Thousands of voluntary complaints.
BARBARA MULLARKEY: Over 10 thousand.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: The thing that the press doesn't go much into is the fact that there's a very great question of whether the approval process at the FDA was corrupt, or incompetent, or inadequate. Right?
BARBARA MULLARKEY: Yes, there are a lot of questions about the initial research. And an FDA toxicologist says that the original research was "built on a foundation of fancy." The original studies have not been replicated. But it jumped from being that they were working on a, a chemist was working on a drug, an anti-ulcer drug, at the time, at G.D. Searle in 1965. And then in the '70s it became a food additive.
You could write to my post office box: it's P.O. Box 946, Oak Park, Illinois 60303. And if you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, I'd be glad to send you a flyer on this.
The title of the book is Bittersweet Aspartame: A Diet Delusion. And if you're in Illinois, it's $11 and it's $1.40 shipping and handling and 85 cents tax.
[Apparently, Skolnick asks a question here.]
Well it's my column for a newspaper for 15 years on the
subject. And it's also FDA statistics and a lot of researchers.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK: If this was really widely known in the mass media, I mean really widely known, isn't it true that some of these foodstores would have to come with a steamshovel or a bulldozer and clean out the store and dump it in Lake Michigan?
BARBARA MULLARKEY: I hope they wouldn't dump it in Lake Michigan! We can't have some fish being harmed!
Call up your local newsfakers and tell them to stop kidding us about NutraSweet.
In Chicago, see us on cable tv, channel 21, 9 pm [cst] most Monday evenings.
New message Thursday [312-731-1100]; we change it several times a week.
Donations appreciated. Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts, 9800 South Oglesby, Chicago, [Illinois] 60617. For the latest on courts, banks, espionage agencies, political assassinations, and the news media. On 24 hours a day.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html
See also: ftp ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred