Because public relations firms have been so successful in brainwashing the public about the dangers of aspartame use, aspartame activist can’t even count of the support of such groups as the Green Parties, whose members seem to draw the line in the criticism of the powers that be in the face of being labeled as “loonies�?by people who are getting their indoctrination, ultimately, at the hands of their worst enemies - the minions of the Monsanto Corporation! This exchange, which took place on the Texas Green Party’s mailing list in June of 1999 shows the extent of the PR hacks�?success and how supposed activists don’t seem to be much different from any other mollified and trusting consumer when it comes to aspartame. The term “Urban Legend�?in reference to aspartame usually refers to the work of David Emery of About.com, formerly known Mining Company, who has evolved into the sort of guru of pro-aspartame flamers and industry shills on the World Wide Web. His web page where  he lampoons aspartame activists is passed around the Internet in e-mail attachments as an antidote, supposedly, to the Nancy Markle letter - making him into a sort of “Monsanto Markle�?for all practical purposes. Nevertheless, the term “urban legend�?is now the official bit of computer age jargon used to label aspartame victims efforts on the part of modern pundits, flamers and, of course, PR hacks.

Subject:
       Re: aspartame is a GE food - after a fashion
   Date:
       Tue, 18 May 1999 02:30:00 -0600
  From:
       [email protected]
    To:
       [email protected]
 

Sorry, I have to object here - the smear campaign against aspartame is, to put
it nicely, an urban legend.

The Center For Disease Control and FDA have published statements concerning it's
safety. The Lupus Foundation of America reports : there is, as of now,  no specific
proof of an association with aspartame as a cause or  worsening of SLE.
The Multiple Schlerosis Foundation denies that there is any connection between
aspartame and the initiation or worsening of MS.

None of the above organizations have any connection with Monsanto the
manufacturers of aspartame.

I understand that many of us hold grudges against Monsanto for their some of the
products that are toxic and/or irresponsibly engineered, however in this case we need to stick
with what the research says - which is that aspartame is as safe as any likely replacement product (ie
sugar, saccharin, etc.)

We've already driven one sweetener off the market on the basis of  rumors and
shaky research (cyclomates, which incidently are still legal in Canada) let's not make the life
of diabetics anymore difficult without good reason.

David Pollard
 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject:
       evil empire revisited, or legendary urbaness redux
   Date:
       Wed, 19 May 1999 00:40:53 -0500
  From:
       Edward Bryant Holman <[email protected]>
    To:
       Texas Greens <[email protected]>
 

We get around one hundred aspartame victims a month who sign up to our
aspartame support group, and we get very little publicity. It is a
miracle every time someone finds us. But we are very aware that the
nature of the problem is enormous. We get lampooned by people who get
their information, ultimately, from the same public relations firm that
represents people like the NRA and the UNITA rebels of Angola, along
with Jerry Falwell and a few more organizations whom I don't choose to
support. Monsanto pays them a lot of money to see that Time magazine,
CNN, the "Urban Legends" departments of some of the web mega-sites, and
a lot of other media people smear us. In addition, there are lots of
organizations which exist in order to help diabetics and MS sufferers,
but who don't get much money from the government, and the NutraSweet
Corporation steps in there with financial help in order to have a hand
in selling their products to all the people who turn to these
organizations for information. This is why the information that you get
about aspartame from these organizations is written by NutraSweet and
reads almost verbatim the same way that it reads on NutraSweet's
website.

The fact is, though, that their propaganda efforts always fly up in
their face, because they only serve to give people a clue about their
own situation, which leads them to look for more information, and this
eventually leads them to us. Our hits go up dramatically every time we
get smeared! Our mail runs well over one hundred to one in our favor.
Most if it is from victims.

So, it is nothing new to us to be flamed by people mouthing the same
industry slogans that we have heard a thousand times before. (These are
slogans written by the same people who write the slogans for the UNITA
rebels and for Jerry Falwell). It is new (for me, at least) to hear
slogans that tar us with the same brush that is meant for tarring Ronald
Reagan. (That is a new one on me, since it was Ronald Reagan who
originally got aspartame approved in the first place, by replacing the
former head of the FDA with a guy who approved aspartame almost the very
day that he stepped into office).  Nevertheless, our movement grows by
leads and bounds because of the simple fact that people get a clue about
where all of their symptoms are coming from - from whatever source - and
they stop using these products and the symptoms go away. We have huge
collections of such testimonies. If you just want to see a few, read the
ones we have listed on our site, or read our archives of our posts,
which we keep in a public format, for anyone to see. Just log onto our
site at  http://presidiotex.com/aspartame

If you want to read a relatively new report that alludes to a lab study
where they conclusively proved that aspartame which was tagged with
radioactive isotopes degenerated into formaldehyde in the tissues of the
animals, and was stored there, causing buildup of toxins in an
exponential fashion, go to http://www.focusnewsletter.org/barcelon.htm.

This study was done by the University of Barcelona, presumably far from
the reach of Monsanto's political and PR reach. But not far enough. I
received an e-mail from a journalist in Barcelona recently, and I asked
her get in contact with the people who did the study. She later reported
that they are very scared, as they have been apparently subjected to
some kind of threats. This is not unusual. The case of Dr. Arpad Pusztai
<[email protected]> is quite famous in Europe now. He is receiving
a lot of attention by Greenpeace and by the Green Party in the UK,
particularly (which garnered 15% of the vote in that last EU
parliamentary elections, by the way). Dr. Pusztai was threatened with
actually being jailed by the British government for releasing
information that they wished to see repressed: that genetically
engineered potatoes caused cancer in lab mice. Dr. Pusztai has since
gone on to be the poster boy of the Greens in Europe, in their fight
against GM foods - which fight is at the top of their agenda.

One organization that should get a lot of credit in this country for
tuning into the pulse of the world of environmentalism and activism is
the Gateway Green Alliance, in St. Louis, Missourri. These people poured
a gallon of milk out on the carpet at the Monsanto
stockholders meeting in St. Louis in order to protest the use of bovine
growth hormone - one of Monsanto's many "frankenfoods" - as
environmentalists label these products.
http://www.purefood.org/Monsanto/sharemtg99.cfm

For a background on Monsanto, written from a Green point of view, you
should check out  http://www.purefood.org/monlink.htm

As far as the language that contains allusions to Reaganism and the
repeating of industry inspired slogans here, contained in the flames
directed my way here, I am not angry and I won't react because I have to
assume that most of the members of this list are already pretty well
educated on the reality of this situation, and there seems to be enough
flaming going on here as it is. The people who choose to flame me I will
not recriminate, because I assume that they believe they are doing what
is right. I do know that in my own case that aspartame was harmful to
me, and I know that the information contained on the industry websites
claims that it is absolutely impossible to have any allergic or toxic
reactions to aspartame. So, either I, and all the other victims have
just phantasized our arthritic symptoms, our uncontrollable blood sugar
levels, our blindness, our migraines, our fibromylgia, and all the other
things that the hundreds of members who have signed up to our group have
reported, and later after detoxing reported these symptoms disappearing
- that we are all completely insane and imagining all of this: It is
either that, or that these people who write the public relations lines
for the UNITA rebels and Jerry Falwell are maybe being a little less
than truthful when they say that we are all either imagining this or
that we are involved in some sort of conspiracy to deliberately mislead
the public. I tend to believe that a big corporaton, who already
established a pretty clear track record in the past with their agent
orange and their dioxin as to how much they are going to own up to the
damage that they have done to people and to the environment, is more
likely going to have reason to be generating conspiracies of
misinformation.

Bryant Holman