ASPARTAME AND BLINDNESS

Subject: Dr. Morgan Raiford/methanol toxicity/blindness/aspartame

In interviewing the husband of Joyce Wilson who went blind and died from
NutraSweet I was given many of her records.  She ran ASPARTAME VICTIMS
AND THEIR FRIENDS until her death from this poison.  The late Dr. Morgan
Raiford was a specialist in methanol toxicity and many of the patients
who went blind on NutraSweet were brought to Atlanta for his diagnosis.
He was an ophthalmologist and founder of the Atlanta Eye Clinic.

Many people today say their ophthalmologists have said they were going
blind but don't know why, and diabetics in particular are thought to have
simple diabetic retinopathy.  The methanol in aspartame converts to
formaldehyde in the retina of the eye.  It causes retinal detachments,
blurring of the vision, double vision, floaters, flashes, black spots,
optic neuritis, tunnel vision, etc.   Dr. H. J. Roberts on a radio program
recently said aspartame destroys the optic nerve.

Since we have had a hard time finding ophthalmologists that know and
can identify the problem I am providing Dr. Morgan Raiford's fact sheet.
For every physician or ophthalmologist who has this information he can
save the lives of thousands.  Many times if patients had been warned off
aspartame when they were first seen they would not be blind today.  Even
if you don't use aspartame (marketed as NutraSweet/Equal/Equal
Measure/Spoonful, and no telling what since the patent has expired)
please print this out and give it to your eye doctor and physician.  When
Dr. Raiford wrote this NutraSweet was only in a few hundred products -
today its in 7000 products and climbing with an expired patent - in 90
countries of the world!

May 20, 1987:  FACTS ABOUT ASPARTAME

The above product is also manufactured as NutraSweet.  This pharmological
spin-off is as highly profitable item, with a growing market.  These
products are used as a sweetener, some 200 times as sweet as regular cane
sugar.

This product has some highly toxic reactions in the human visual pathway
and we are beginning to observe the tragic damage to the OPTIC NERVE,
such as blindness, partial to total OPTIC NERVE ATROPHY.  Once this
destructive process has developed there is no return of visual
restoration. We are beginning to see and observe another toxic reaction
which affects the central nervous system which is related to PHENYLALANINE
LEVELS IN THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM.  These observations are more vague,
however, it stimulates the damaging to the brain and the central nervous
system, having the manifestations as PKU NEURO DAMAGE.  Over 3000 cases
have been reported and the FDA to date has ignored this existence.
(Writers Note: Now over 10,000)

HUMAN VISUAL PATHWAY DAMAGE

The human visual pathway admits ninety percent of our intellectual input
to the brain and central nervous system.  All of the learning processes
are centered during ones life time.  The mechanism of this tragic damage
to the human visual system from this product is and has been known for
over a decade that visual loss takes place. When this drug enters the
digestive tract, largely the upper portion, this ASPARTAME molecule spins
off a by product known as METHANOL or METHYL-ALCOHOL.  This product enters
the blood stream and when these portions reach the highly metabolic
region of the OPTIC NERVE AND RETINA, PARTIAL ATROPHY CAN AND DOES TAKE
PLACE.  The vision can not do without oxygen and nutrition for more than
ninety seconds without revealing some damage.  Total loss of vision is
present and there is no return.  In the very early stages in which is
referred to as the "wet stage", treatment can be given and will reserve
the destructive pathology to the OPTIC NERVE and RETINA.  This must be in
the mind of the physician and he must understand the chemical ongoing
process.  The writer has seen many cases where the patent was allowed to
go to the degrees of blindness, as this diagnosis of OPTIC NEURITIS was
rendered, as the term IDIOPATHIC NEURITIS OF OPTIC NERVE was given,
usually steroids until systemic gross body and facial moon developed.
This therapy has demonstrated the total lack of understanding of the
basic lack of BIO-CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY AT THE MOLECULAR LEVEL.

The variability or onset of the OPTIC NERVE ATROPHY is of a type that one
must first think of this pathology, and it requires a certain amount of
listening to the patient.  The quantity of symptoms vary with each patient.

Over the past year the writer has observed the fact that any portion of
the central nervous system can and is affected.  Since the chemical
PHENYLALANINE is mixed up with some metabolic mess, we have seen symptoms
of varying hue in the extremities, sensations of dullness of the
intellect, visual shadows, evidence of word structure reversing and some
hearing impairment is noted by the individual.  This can and will in time
cause problems in learning.  The medical community must alert itself that
we have a problem that has surfaced due to the factor of the drug
industry.  Parents must be alerted to the side reactions of this toxic
product and its reactions.

Sincerely,
Morgan B. Raiford, M.D.  D.Sc (Med) OPHTHALMOLOGY

We hope all reading this will take it very seriously.  Almost 10 years
have past since Dr. Raiford wrote it and now we have an epidemic of
ASPARTAME DISEASE!  The EPA, Dr. Gaylord, has already announced an
epidemic of MS at the World Environmental Conference where I lectured.
She said they didn't know the toxic causing it.  I explained its not MS
but methanol toxicity from aspartame which mimics MS and we realize it is
now epidemic.

Please get off this poison.  It is triggering neurological diseases
because it changes the brain chemistry.  It changes the dopamine level of
the brain.  The phenylalanine lowers the seizure threshold in the brain
and blocks serotonin, so now we have epidemic manic depression, panic
attacks, etc.  Seizures are rampant.

For more information on aspartame you can use our auto-responder.  Simply
email me and put sendme help in the subject line like this:

Subject:  sendme help

When you get a directory simply put sendme help in the subject line again
and whatever file you want to access typed exactly as written in the
lefthand side of the directory.  Example:

Subject:  sendme diabetes-aspartame

Please also print out Dr. Roberts position paper on aspartame and the eye.
His tapes and books on the subject are available at 1 800 - 814-9800. Dr.
H. J. Roberts is a Board Certified Internist, endocrinologist and has been
warning diabetics, and the rest of the world off aspartame since it was
approved.  He has recently published DEFENSE AGAINST ALZHEIMERS DISEASE
which has been nominated for a Pulitzer.  He explains how the two
amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, isolated from the other
amino acids in protein go past the blood brain barrier and deteriorate
the neurons of the brain.  This is escalating Alzheimers Disease!

You can also get EXCITOTOXINS; THE TASTE THAT KILLS by Neurosurgeon, Dr.
Russell Blaylock.  (1 800-643-2665)

Both Dr. Roberts and Dr. Blaylock explain that aspartame actually
precipitates diabetes!

Also you can check out Mark Gold's web page on aspartame:

http://www.tiac.net/users/mgold/health.html

We are revising our warning flyer that we distribute worldwide and it
will be added to the responder at a later date but if you want it as we
have it now we will be happy to email it.

Betty Martini       MISSION POSSIBLE (the people warning the world to
                    get this poison off the planet)

Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 12:18:20 -0400
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: NUTRASWEET/BLINDNESS, Chi-Sun Times

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Friday, October 17, 1986

Consumer group links NutraSweet to blindness
By William Hines
Chief, Washington Bureau
Chicago Sun-Times

Ban artificial sweetener, FDA is urged

WASHINGTON - Charging that aspartame - the widely used artificial sweetener
marketed as NutraSweet - causes blindness, a consumer group yesterday
petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban it.

     The petition was another step in a long and so far fruitless campaign by
the Washington based Community Nutrition Institute against aspartame, which
also is sold in stores under the name Equal.

     Three women who said their eyesight was seriously damaged or destroyed
joined in the citizens� petition to the FDA, which they asked "to
expeditiously remove [the] product from the market without an administrative
hearing."

     At a press conference called by the institute to announce the
imminent-hazard petition, two of the women told of heavy use of
aspartame-sweetened products and said their doctors had advised them the
sugar substitute was the cause of their sight loss.

     The NutraSweet Co., of Skokie, Ill., a subsidiary of Searle & Co.,
brushed off the institute�s complaint as "simply another round in their
repeated efforts to gain publicity for their thoroughly discredited views on
aspartame."

     A Washington-based group called the International Food Information
Council said through its executive director, Thomas E. Stenzel, the
allegations "that aspartame causes various side effects are not based on any
scientific data or controlled clinical studies."

     James S. Turner, a Washington lawyer representing the Community
Nutrition Institute in the petition, said the eye damage to the women named
in the complaint was "a direct, causally related event to their consumption
of NutraSweet."

Both heavy users

     Both women, Dana Cozad of St. Petersburg, Fla., and Joyce Wilson of
Stockbridge, Ga., described themselves as heavy users of the sweetener.

     Wilson, a real estate agent, said she no longer can take sales prospects
to see property because her vision does not permit her to drive.

     "It has cost me a lot, and I really want the public to know what a
dangerous product it is," Wilson said.

     Cozad said that vision loss struck her suddenly in the right eye while
she was driving home and that lengthy surgery and other sight-saving efforts
followed.

     She said vision is gone in that eye, and - after she has spent 13 months
on an aspartame-free diet - the condition of the left eye "remains relatively
stable."

     Both women said their physicians had ruled out causes other than
aspartame for their sight loss.

Methyl alcohol blamed

     Dr. H. J. Roberts of West Palm Beach, Fla., said methyl alcohol is a
component of aspartame and is responsible for vision damage, which he termed
"the most serious complication" of those arising from aspartame use.

     Aspartame, which is described as a "natural" product, contains two amino
acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, which are components of protein.
 Under certain storage conditions, the sweetener breaks down in part and
methyl alcohol is a byproduct.

     Roberts said the visual reaction to methyl alcohol in heavy users of
aspartame is the same as in drinkers of moonshine whiskey in Prohibition
days:  "They go blind."

     Of 360 patients he has diagnosed as having aspartame-related problems,
Roberts said, about one-fourth had decreased vision or blindness, nearly half
had severe headaches and substantial numbers had epileptic seizures,
confusion or memory loss, extreme depression and marked personality change.

     At FDA headquarters in Rockville, Md., spokesman William Grigg said the
petition had  been received but not yet studied.

     Grigg recalled that Turner filed several interventions against aspartame
in the past, none of which received favorable FDA action.