LAWSUITS ACCUSE MANY COMPANIES OF POISONING THE PUBLIC WITH ASPARTAME...

SACRAMENTO -- April 6th, Lawsuits were filed in three separate California courts against twelve companies who either produce or use the artificial sweetener aspartame as a sugar substitute in their products. The suits were filed in Shasta, Sonoma and Butte County, California.

The suits allege that the food companies committed fraud and breach of warranty by marketing products to the public such as diet Coke, diet Pepsi, sugar free gum, Flintstone's vitamins, yogurt and children's aspirin with the full knowledge that aspartame, the sweetener in them, is neurotoxic.

Aspartame is a drug masquerading as an additive. It interacts with other drugs, has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG, and is a chemical hyper-sensitization agent. As far back as 1970, Dr. John Olney founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity when he did studies on aspartic acid, which makes up 40% of aspartame, and found it caused lesions in the brains of mice. He made world news on the aspartame/brain tumor connection in l996. Dr. Ralph Walton, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine has written of the behavioral and psychiatric problems triggered by aspartame-caused depletion of serotonin.

Aspartame causes headache, memory loss, seizures, vision loss, coma and cancer. It worsens or mimics the symptoms of such diseases and conditions as fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, ADD, diabetes, Alzheimer's, chronic fatigue and depression.

In original studies, aspartame has triggered brain, mammary, uterine, ovarian, testicular, thyroid and pancreatic tumors.

Defendants in the lawsuits include Coca-cola, PepsiCo, Bayer Corp., the Dannon Company, William Wrigley Jr. Company, ConAgra Foods, Wyeth, Inc., The NutraSweet Company, and Altria Corp. (parent company of Kraft Foods and Philip Morris).

Plaintiffs have asked for an injunction to stop companies from producing, manufacturing, processing, selling or using aspartame.

Plaintiffs in all three cases are seeking a jury trial.

If you would like to schedule someone from the National Justice League for an interview, please call or fax us at (530) 248-3483.