ASPARTAME AWARENESS WEEKEND - SEPTEMBER 9 - 11 2011:

Here is the Diane Fleming story. Let's keep it going until we can bring this innocent woman home!

It was May 21 of 2003 when I received a frantic email from Betty Rickmond, close friend of Diane Fleming: "I have been trying desperately to get the attention of "someone" who could possibly come to the aid of my dear friend, Diane, who was charged and found guilty for the death of her husband after he had ingested Creatine in Gatorade for the first time on a Sunday afternoon in June, 2000."

The story was very much the same as other consumers addicted to aspartame. So many body builders and athletes are on diet soda thinking it keeps them thin when, in fact, it makes you crave carbohydrates so you gain weight. In the case of Charles Fleming he was taking Ripped Fuel, Met-Rx Bars, Protein Bars and medications including Prevacid, Sumycin Tetracycline, Naproxen, a multivitamin with iron and Vancenase AQ. He added to this 8 diet sodas.. At night he would mix Bourbon Whiskey in Diet Sprite, two to four drinks each evening. Charles was on two drugs just for the rosacea from the methanol.

Aspartame (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful,Canderel, E951, AminoSweet, etc.) is only masquerading as an additive. In reality it's an addictive excitoneurotoxic carcinogenic drug and adjuvant that interacts with drugs and vaccines. In the medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, by H. J. Roberts he discusses that aspartame may either reduce or potentate drug action by various mechanisms. He lists a few of the possibilities.

Alteration of the blood proteins to which drugs attach.

Alteration of drug receptors on cell membranes.

Changes in the sites at which impulses are transmitted along nerves and to muscle.

Metabolic abnormalities in the elderly that are known to enhance their vulnerability to drug reactions (Weber l986). This problem increases in the case of persons taking multiple drugs ("polypharmacy") prescribed by several physicians.

Interference with drug action by amino acids and protein. An example is the erratic therapeutic effects when patients with parkinsonism who were controlled on levodopa began to use aspartame products. The antagonism of levodopa by dietary protein presumably reflects impaired transport from serum across the blood brain barrier by neutral amino acids (Pincus l986).

Dr. Roberts states: "An interaction should be suspect with virtually every drug if the patient is using aspartame." With what Charles Fleming was taking you wonder how he lasted as long as he did.

Dr. James Bowen has written about the biochemical interactions between aspartame and other poisons including many pharmaceuticals illustrated in Dr. Roberts medical text. Bowen says: "Because aspartame in the processes of digestion and metabolism, forms many other severe poisonings, and toxic intermediate metabolites, it's potential for drug related interactions is immeasurable. To top that off, the aspartame molecule is so heinously poisonous in several ways that it never passed a single FDA standard toxicity test!"

Dr. Bowen continues, "Aspartame is a known destroyer of DNA. The mitocondrial DNA (MtDNA) is especially damaged, yielding the present epidemic of diseases aspartame consuming mothers pass on to future generations. Aspartame also directly damages the mitochondria, thus having a "double whammy" effect on mitochondrial function! The summation of these many known severe toxicities and its immune, genetic, mitochondrial, and metabolic damages, show that aspartame will not only cause many diseases, which the FDA and CDC have already noted but it has pathways of approach to interact adversely with every conceivable pharmaceutical."

To add insult to injury just prior to Fleming's death he bought a case of Gatorade and a carton of Creatine. Diane cautioned him on using so many of these products thought to be dangerous. It was mixed at three times the label instructions because Charles misread the instructions (tablespoon instead of teaspoon). When he realized what was done he said, "more is better". He did not like the taste of the Creatine in the warm Gatorade so he put it in the fridge and drank it after returning from a vigorous game of basketball outside on this June afternoon.

Fleming was an accident about to happen. Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD, is deeply concerned about young athletes who suddenly die from deadly aspartame. He writes: "An alarming number young athletes are included in these deaths, in high schools and colleges as well as among professional athletes. While in some of these individuals cardiologists found evidence of coronary disease and scars from earlier silent heart attacks, there is one mechanism that's getting no attention at all: the excitotoxin damage caused by food additives and the artificial sweetener aspartame. This is despite growing evidence that the excitotoxic mechanism plays a major role in cardiac disease.

"Previously, it was thought that excitotoxic food additives, such as monosodium glutamate and aspartic acid in aspartame, cause their damage in the cardiovascular centers in the brain stem and/or by over-stimulating sympathetic centers in the hypothalamus of the brain. Both mechanisms have resulted in sudden cardiac death in experimental animals.

"A particularly deadly combination occurs in young athletes: Low magnesium intake, high calcium intake, low intake of omega-3 fatty acids and excitotoxins in food additives. Strenuous exercise, especially in extreme heat, depletes the body's magnesium stores, as does consumption of carbonated drinks and taking calcium supplements. Also adrenalin secretion, increased during exercise, intensifies heart muscle irritability and further loss of magnesium as well. When calcium supplements are taken in the face of an existing magnesium deficiency, both magnesium and calcium are driven into the bones, producing a sudden magnesium-depletion crisis.

"Low magnesium produces seizures and causes sudden cardiac arrest. In a classic experiment it was found that stressing magnesium-deficient animals resulted in an almost 100% mortality from sudden cardiac arrest. Adding magnesium reduced mortality dramatically. A considerable body of evidence has shown that low omega-3 fat intake significantly increases the risk and severity of cardiac arrhythmias, the main cause of sudden cardiac death."

Charles Fleming played the most aerobic sport - basketball, as he consumed excitotoxins daily. His autopsy was as expected. While he was an organ donor cardiomegaly was noted, enlarged heart. This usually is the actual cause of death. The actual diagnosis was acute methanol poisoning with metabolic acidosis. The autopsy showed the chronic methanol poisoning he had been suffering from for years. It also showed the fatty liver that is so associated with aspartame.

The autopsy showed chronic methanol poisoning. Aspartame releases free methyl (wood) alcohol methanol, a class A carcinogen of which one ounce is a fatal dose. In a similar case Merry Kay Protheroe, of Wichita, Kansas, daily drank 10 diet Fresca, artificially sweetened with aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet). On August 31, 2006, Merry's husband, noting her lethargy and confusion, rushed her to an ER where she was diagnosed with acute methanol poisoning. She heard police outside her room saying that if she died they would arrest her husband. Fortunately she recovered, but said that because of her aspartame addiction her husband could have been prosecuted for murder, as was Diane Fleming when her husband suddenly died. Merry Kay has since died but at least she lived long enough for the police to understand this was from aspartame.

Other cases confirm this pattern. Mary Corcoran wrote the FDA: .."I am just recovering from a near fatal illness. I have been suffering from metabolic acidosis these last few months (a severe biochemical state due to methanol alcohol poisoning) causing severe pain in my joints, muscles and tendons. The kidney doctor was shocked with his diagnosis, since I was neither an alcoholic nor a diabetic. .. I contribute all of this to my diet Pepsi habit along with some other NutraSweet products."

Another woman in New York using all types of aspartame products died from methanol toxicity. Her husband has been indicted for her death even though aspartame is the culprit.

How did Fleming's chronic methanol poisoning finally become acute, and fatal? James Bowen, M.D., physician, biochemist, aspartame victim and 20 year aspartame researcher describes it's toxic mechanism process in detail:

"N- Methyl, L- Aspartyl Phenylalanine (aspartame) is a highly crafted form of the toxic axis: methanol/formaldehyde/formic acid/carbon monoxide, which follows aspartame consumption. Methyl alcohol yields formaldehyde, which oxidizes to make formic acid. These are three immeasurably deadly biological poisons. A toxic axis is an obligatory chain of reactions. Methyl esters like aspartame, are far more poisonous when combined with other toxic components, because the poisons are additive. They directly and cumulatively synergize each other's toxic effects.

"The toxic axis progresses by obligatory human metabolism producing worse poisonings from each metabolic step. 75% is concentrated within your mitochondria, cellular energy furnaces. The mitochondria and their DNA (MtDNA) are grievously damaged, by aspartame, which has caused an immense increase of MtDNA diseases. Diabetes, quick hair graying, brain cancer, and the entire long list of MtDNA diseases are epidemic, since aspartame was released in l981. Symptoms include muscular defects, cardiac defects, diabetes, brain cancer and cardiomyopathy. These also occur prematurely in alcoholics.

"The Aspartame molecule is one of the worst forms of methanol poisoning because every component of that ester is additively toxic and very specific in the ways it synergizes the other aspartame molecular sub-units. Also, aspartame chelates toxic aluminum from soda cans and carries it past your normal host defenses, so when you drink an aspartame cola you inject aluminum into your brain where it is commonly found in tangles of dead neurons in the brains of Alzheimer’s victims!

“Coke and Pepsi drivers say whenever a can of soda corrodes through its aluminum can and sprays through the machine, its always the diet soda. Colas like Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi also contain corrosive phosphoric acid that reacts with aluminum cans, making aluminum phosphate, another brain-cell eradicator. Phosphoric acid de-enamels your teeth and decalcifies your bones. In l977 the FDA denied approval of aspartame because it chelates toxic metals which are quickly absorbed into the blood, then the brain.

"The Aspartame molecule isomerizes into its diketopiperazine ring isomer yielding a carbon-nitrogen-oxygen-carbon-nitrogen-oxygen- six atom ring with the other components of Aspartame still intact upon that diketopiperazine ring: DKP intensifies aspartame's toxicities.

"Diketopiperazine chemicals are often used to produce plastics, because they greedily polymerize substances to form large polymer molecules. The chromosome shattering formic acid, formaldehyde, and DKP denature your DNA and body proteins, and damage your immune system. This causes autoimmunity in which your immune system is triggered to attack your body and brain!

"Formic acid is a blister poison. Upon killing the first cell it diffuses to cell after cell, creating a BLISTER of dead tissues! Methanol from aspartame, although immediately poisoning you, doesn't instantly elevate detectable blood methanol levels because first it is metabolized within cells into formaldehyde and formic acid which attack the mitochondria within those cells, especially the liver. Blood methyl alcohol levels rise subsequently. Formic acid is fire ant venom. These tiny insects can kill humans weighing millions of times more than they.

"Only after longer aspartame usage does liver damage cause blood methanol levels to measurably rise because the liver mitochondria are so damaged that the liver no longer quickly processes either methyl or ethyl (drink) alcohol. Then the acute methanol poisoning is directly measurable from lab results, as the blood methanol level elevates. This entire sequence or "toxic axis" begins with your very first dose of aspartame. Both acute and chronic poisonings from this methanol toxic axis, and other additive and synergistic aspartame poisonings, steadily accumulate in the aspartame consumer.

"When you consume aspartame, you initiate the methanol toxic axis! In my case I lost my balance, following which, on my second day, I developed toxic cardiomyopathy, with resultant congestive heart failure, resulting in pulmonary edema. Then I who had been until that moment been a two mile per day swimmer, could not even climb a set of stairs, without stopping in the middle to get my wind back.

"With any heavy use of alcoholic drinks, traces of methyl alcohol in those beverages could cause acute methanol poisoning, but the ethanol (a methanol antidote), prevents the methanol toxic axis from developing, so the methanol merely accumulates. As the ethyl alcohol is metabolized and deleted from your blood stream, the residual methanol is metabolized and you get methanol poisoning: hangover!

"Other examples of this toxic axis are the extreme poisonings caused by formaldehyde, which plasticizes corpses, and is a deadly carcinogen. Both acute and chronic poisonings from methanol with the several other synergistic poisonings from aspartame ingestion steadily accumulate within aspartame consumers until finally hastening or culminating in fatal events.

"Not only did Diet Kool Aid destroy my medical practice, but in only six weeks destroyed my health and aged me thirty years." - JB, MD

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Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD said in his definitive medical text, Health & Nutrition Secrets To Save Your Life, pg 125: “So in the case of diet drinks in aluminum cans, the very toxic brain aluminum fluoride compound co-exists with multiple toxins found in aspartame, thus creating the most powerful government approved toxic soup imaginable. With the strong association between aluminum, excitotoxins, aluminum fluoride complexes and Alzheimer’s disease, it would be completely irresponsible to encourage people to consume this toxic mixture.”

Dr. H. J. Roberts says chronic exposure to methyl alcohol depletes the ability of cells at some point to handle additional methanol, and the effect is a “tipping point of toxicity.” Fleming’s liver lost its ability to detoxify or oxidize methanol. Humans are more vulnerable to methanol than lab animals, as we do not possess two or more enzymes required for metabolizing it, so it endures in our systems much longer than in animals. For this reason animal toxicological studies on aspartame/methanol tend to understate its peril to humans.

Dr. Roberts, who in 1984 was distinguished as “The Best Doctor in the United States” by a medical publication, discusses the rate of human methyl alcohol oxidation in his encyclopedic text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, explaining: “The toxicity of methanol is enhanced by its slow rate of oxidation, only one-seventh that of ethyl alcohol (ethanol).” This means deadly methanol excessively persists in humans, ravaging our vital organs and eventually concentrating in our blood.”

It cannot be maintained that Charles Fleming died from a massive dose of methanol right before death since he exhibited toxic methanol symptoms long before dying. The autopsy report describes him as ”an athletic man who for the month prior to death complained of some shortness of breath” Dr. Morando Soffritti who did the award winning 3 year 1,800 rat Ramazzini Study on aspartame showed it to be a multipotential carcinogen. He lists respiratory disease as part of the dying process. The autopsy showed metabolic acidosis. That is characteristic of methanol poisoning. In the severe biochemical state, excessive acids in the body can produce respiratory failure and death.

The autopsy showed his terminal illness occurred after a basketball tournament. Basketball is one of the most aerobic sports. Aspartame is causing sudden death in athletes. Russell Blaylock, M.D., wrote the Athlete Alert: Aspartame and MSG in Sudden Cardiac Death because of the constant reports of young athletes dropping dead. Likewise Dr. Roberts writes that cardiac arrhythmias and sudden death in athletes, drivers and pilots is associated with aspartame use.

Aspartame triggers an irregular heart rhythm, interacts with all cardiac medication, damages the cardiac conduction system and causes sudden death. Constantly articles reporting athletes falling dead are in medical journals: See Maron, B.J. Sudden Death in Young Athletes, New England Journal of Medicine 2003;349:1064-1075

Fleming’s autopsy described cardiomegaly, enlargement of the heart, for an undetermined reason. The reason is obvious. The autopsy identifies “chronic methanol poisoning.” Here’s a man who played basketball four times a week and drank methanol cocktails all day long for the ten years he was married to Diane. Many are surprised Fleming even lived as long as he did with such a history. He had been dying for a long time.

Charles Fleming’s tragic death is concisely described in the American Family Physician article Methanol toxicity, Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registr as cited in Pub Med from the National Library of Medicine:

Pathophysiologically, methanol toxicity represents a classic example of “lethal synthesis,” in which toxic metabolites can cause fatality after a characteristic latent period. Methanol is well absorbed following inhalation, ingestion or cutaneous exposure. It is oxidized in the liver to formaldehyde, then to formic acid, which contributes to the profound metabolic acidosis occurring in acute methanol poisoning. The metabolic products of methanol can produce a syndrome of delayed-onset acidosis, obtundation, visual disturbance and death. American Family Physician 1993 Jan & Oct.

Charles Fleming was murdered by aspartame, not his innocent wife, Diane. She was the one who called the police. It was Diane who gave a bottle of what he was last drinking to the police. She helped the police and took three lie detector tests, passing with flying colors.

I personally spoke to Bob Skowron, the detective on the case, who said “Diane Fleming is innocent. I would have stopped the indictment but was promoted right at that time and taken off the case. I have sent many people to death row but I could not have slept if I had allowed an innocent woman to be prosecuted.”

No evidence was presented to prove the case, simply the accusation that Charles was poisoned by windshield washer fluid from a container in the garage. That jug had never been opened!! When it was tested it was not found to be the culprit. Yet the toxicologist failed to leave a written report for the jury to know that, otherwise she would have been acquitted, When the jury was questioned as to why they convicted Diane Fleming they answered: “She showed no emotion.” She couldn’t show emotion because she was such a basket case at being indicted that her doctor put her on Zoloft, a powerful calmative, and she was using aspartame. Zoloft plus aspartame produce a zombie state.

No longer on Zoloft, Diane told her story from prison in the movie Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, with tears in her eyes. She lost her husband, her children, her home and her freedom from this deadly chemical.

Aspartame could not be shown to be safe, so the studies were fixed which caused the FDA to request the Department of Justice to prosecute the manufacture for submitting fraudulent documents. lying to the government. But G. D. Searle Co. had a dynamic new Chief, Donald Rumsfeld, who completely understood the Washington power game. Both US Prosecutors, Sam Skinner and William Conlon were hired by the defense team and the statute of limitations expired.

Simply put, the Godfather hired the prosecuting attorneys and the case collapsed. Skinner’s later reward was to become Secretary of the Department of Transportation, the DOT, there to squelch aspartame complaints from commercial pilots, many of whom died or had grand mal seizures from the toxin. Nevertheless Flying Safety, an Air Force magazine, warned pilots off aspartame in the May 1992 issue.

FDA revoked Searle’s petition for aspartame approval, so they sued the FDA, who once more refused to approve it. Now Don Rumsfeld, on President Reagan’s transition team, called in his markers and a new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes, was appointed the day after Reagan’s inauguration. President Reagan knew it would take 30 days to get Hayes to the FDA so wrote an executive order making the FDA powerless to sign the revoked petition. FDA Commissioner, Dr. Jere Goyan, was called at 3:00 AM by someone on the transition team and told to resign. The new Commissioner approved aspartame over the objections of FDA’s scientific experts. Then Hayes, under investigation for conflict-of-interest dealings, hired on with the NutraSweet Company’s public relations outfit on a reported ten-year contract for $1,000 per day. Rumsfeld’s involvement is explained by Atty. James Turner in Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/rumsfeld.html You can get a copy from producer Cori Brackett at cori@sweetremedyradio.com

Diane’s mother-in-law wanted custody of Charles Fleming’s only child, Megan. Diane told me she repeatedly badgered to indict her, so they did. The detective on the case says she is innocent, three lie detector tests say she is innocent, affidavits from prominent aspartame experts say she is innocent. Even the doctor in Fleming’s case at the hospital admitted this poisoning took place over a period of time. Fleming was very addicted. Dr. H. J. Roberts who wrote the medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, http://www.sunsentpress explained that the free methyl alcohol is classified as a narcotic. It causes chronic methanol poisoning. This affects the dopamine system of the brain and causes the addiction. Why does she remain in prison? Here is the affidavit from Dr. Roberts: http://www.wnho.net/hjroberts_affidavit.htm

The Diane Fleming story was told on TV. The police refused to comment, to testify against her. Diane’s hopes that the murder conviction would be reversed were scuttled March 2, 2004. Virginia State Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro kept canceling meetings to converse by conference call to Dr. H. J. Roberts. Finally the day arrived, set up for the sole purpose of having her talk to Dr. Roberts. Yet she refused even after agreeing, stating that there was no peer reviewed journal article on aspartame and methanol. Yet, she was holding in her hand the peer reviewed journal article, “Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health “ by Dr. Woodrow Monte. http://www.mpwhi.com/aspartame_methanol_and_public_health.pdf She was reported to the Grievance Board of the medical association, state of Virginia by Dr. Roberts and myself. Dr. Fierro, now retired, is on the same forensic board with Senator Orrin Hatch. It is believed after he “finally” allowed congressional hearings on aspartame he was responsible for the bill not getting out of committee. Monsanto gave him money. That bill would have required independent studies on the problems being seen in the population and would have put a moratorium on aspartame. Monsanto couldn’t have that happen. 92% of independent scientific peer reviewed studies show aspartame is not safe. It is probable Dr. Fierro could have known this was an aspartame case.

Finally a toxicologist entered the picture and reported on the creatine part in this death. Aspartame interacts with creatine. http://www.wnho.net/aspartameandathletics.htm One thing for sure, Charles Fleming died by his own hand. An innocent woman, a Sunday School teacher, has been in prison for over 9 years. She is also sick and in pain. In the meantime while in prison she has lost both her mother and father and hasn't seen her daughter in years.

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Founder, Mission Possible World Health International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com
http://www.wpwhi.com
http://www.wnho.net
http://www.dorway.com
Aspartame Toxicity Center: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame