http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1013
positive selection for neurotoxins (aspartame)?:
Ewald: Murray: 7.20.3

Paul W. Ewald has theorized that viruses and germs cause most common
diseases, if there is also some positive value to the disease, due to
the effects of natural selection over many generations,
while random mutations cause most rare diseases.

[Paul W. Ewald "Evolution of Infectious Diseases" 1996
www.amherst.edu/~biology/faculty/ewald.html "Darwinian Medicine"
(413) 542-2168 PWEwald@... ]

In late 2000, after reading about human evolution and nutrition, it
occured to me that there might be a positive selection pressure for
neurotoxins, since so many people are prone to persistent addiction to
tobacco smoke, alcohol, caffeine, opium, marijuana, cocaine, aspartame--
all directly neurotoxic.

My vision is that over two million years ago,
humans started using fire, while living as small, isolated bands.
Fire meant a huge expansion into new habitats, especially colder
regions, and therefore sudden exposure to all kinds of new plants and
minerals, simultaneous with living in caves and shelters with constant
exposure to smoke, CO, CO2, scorched meat and cooked plants,
vapors of all sorts from the rocks in the hearth, so that there would
have been a tremendous increase in the variety of novel poisons,
simultaneous with a powerful selection pressure for increased
intelligence for hunting, language, tool making, cooperation, and
education. Toxicants often cause mutations, which would increase the
pace of evolution.

But in a highly neurotoxic environments, the brain often is the most
sensitive, vulnerable organ, because it uses so much of the daily
metabolism. The only way the brain could succeed in maintaining
sufficient capacity during the life cycle, would be for it to be
constantly evolving in the direction of massive overcapacity.

Thus, a tribe that lived in proximity to numerous neurotoxins,
with chronic, but not acutely fatal, effects,
would be under great selection pressure
to evolve excess brain capacity, and therefore to even seek
out and become addicted to neurotoxins, because the increase of
brain capacity in a small, rapidly evolving tribe would give it a huge
advantage over competing tribes, who had the misfortune to dwell
in unpoluted ease, in their gardens of Eden.

In this regard, I wonder about the recent report
that Beethoven had severe life-long lead poisoning, from unknown
causes. Does lifelong exposure to secondhand and direct exposure
to tobacco and other smoke increase brain capacity?

As humans relied more and more on fire, on pottery,
and gold-lead-tin-silver-copper-iron,
wouldn't there be a powerful selection pressure to become
addicted to fire, smoke, and metals? This brings to mind the universal
archetype of the dragon, a cave-dwelling beast that is fierce, deadly,
intelligent, hellish, breathing fire and smoke,
as well as the many myths about innocents who,
upon sipping strange and bitter potions, rapidly develop
magic powers and have strange and dangerous adventures.

So, as a "primary medical reference" describes, one tribe left
its garden of Eden, after partaking of the forbidden fruit,
that gave them knowledge of good and evil,
i.e. dualistic, abstract, conceptual thinking. This plant was offered
by a serpent, a denizen of caves and the ground, like its huge relative,
the fire-and-smoke-emitting dragon, very like a flow of lava.
Perhaps this imagery decribes a volcanic landscape,
which is just the kind of area like Santa Fe and Los Alamos,
New Mexico, where abundant minerals, caves,
and hot springs support many plants
and easier survival in a cold, high-altitude climate,
while active volcanos would provide constant access to and
experience in dealing with fire.

The myth that a woman was the first to succumb,
may hint that it was the females, living in caves and
huts, that may have actually pioneered the use of fire for heating and
light, scaring off predators, tool making, and cooking, vastly
increasing their survival rate,
while talking through the night around the fire would
have stimulated language and social cohesion. They would have been
more exposed to neurotoxins than men, away in the wilds, hunting.

The more mobile males would later invent means
for transporting embers and starting fires.
The tribe would have become able to travel anywhere, and, leaving its
original garden, would have spread its genes, its language, its
technology, and its genius all over the Earth. Genesis states that
"angels with flaming swords" prevented any return to the garden of Eden.

But it was man's own possession of fire that made return to a
simpler consciousness and life impossible.

So, fire has played a major role in several major transitions in human
evolution, leading to the Neolithic era of growing grains, which were
cooked and also stored in fired clay pots, and then to the Bronze and
Iron eras. Recently, the Industrial Revolution since 1780 has led to a
huge increase in toxins from massive urban populations exposed to heavy
metals, sulfur, CO, CO2, and even radioactive elements from coal,
followed by gas lighting, and then oil and gasoline. After 1830,
mercury amalgam dental fillings became common. Novel foods, drugs, and
chemicals, both natural and synthesized, have been distributed worldwide
in staggering quantities with exponential acceleration.

We all know about the famous early human footprints
in the Rift Valley of East Africa, in fresh volcanic ash,
millions of years ago. And what is civilization, in recent millenia,
but an increasingly fiery Hell, the creation of neurotoxic primates,
drugged, addicted, confused, fearful,
restless, verbose, imaginative, creative,
perpetually adolescent, immature, aggressive, oversexed, oversized,
overwrought, brilliant?

So, it may be, that we have evolved to have the feeding strategy:
if it tastes weird, affects the brain, but doesn't outright kill, then
become addicted. Maintain the sublethal dosage, and induce others
to share it-- pass the peace pipe. Many spices, like nutmeg, have
psychedelic properties. I am reminded of the remarkable chili
pepper addiction, so prevalent in the extremely creative culture of
my city, Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a culturally impoverished Anglo
from East Texas, I can hardly stand the torment of the hellish stuff!

Many aspartame reactors describe that at first use aspartame had
a distinctly unpleasant taste, and then it became quickly
and progressively addictive.
************************************************************************

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@...
1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe NM USA 87505 505-986-9103

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1002
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartame/message/15477
aspartame review: methanol, formaldehyde, formic acid toxicity:
Murray 7.20.3 rmforall

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@...
1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 USA 505-986-9103

[NutraSweet, Equal, Canderel, Benevia]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/983
aspartame & formaldehyde toxicity: Murray 7.20.3 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/messages
for 1013 posts in a public searchable archive 119 members

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartame/ 15591 posts 684 members

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/989
EU votes 440 to 20 to approve sucralose, limit cyclamates & reevaluate
aspartame & stevia: Murray 4.12.3 rmforall

http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/scf2002-response.htm
Mark Gold exhaustively critiques European Commission Scientific
Committee on Food re aspartame (12.4.2): 59 pages, 230 references

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/910
formaldehyde & formic acid from methanol in aspartame:
Murray: 12.9.2 rmforall

It is certain that high levels of aspartame use, above 2 liters daily
for months and years, must lead to chronic formaldehyde-formic acid
toxicity, since 11% of aspartame (1,120 mg in 2L diet soda, 5.6 12-oz
cans) is 123 mg methanol (wood alcohol), immediately released into the
body after drinking (unlike the large levels of methanol locked up in
molecules inside many fruits), then quickly transformed into
formaldehyde, which in turn becomes formic acid, both of which in
time are partially eliminated as carbon dioxide and water.

However, about 30% of the methanol remains in the body as cumulative
durable toxic metabolites of formaldehyde and formic acid-- 37 mg daily,
a gram every month. [J. Nutrition 1973 Oct; 103(10): 1454-1459.
Metabolism of aspartame in monkeys. Oppermann JA, Muldoon E, Ranney RE.]
If 10% of the methanol is retained as formaldehyde, that would give 12
mg daily formaldehyde accumulation, about 60 times more than the 0.2 mg
from 10% retention of the 2 mg EPA daily limit for formaldehyde in
drinking water.

Bear in mind that the EPA limit for formaldehyde in drinking water is
1 ppm, or 2 mg daily for a typical daily consumption of 2 L of water.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/835
RTM: ATSDR: EPA limit 1 ppm formaldehyde in drinking water July 1999
5.30.2 rmforall

This long-term low-level chronic toxic exposure leads to typical
patterns of increasingly severe complex symptoms, starting with
headache, fatigue, joint pain, irritability, memory loss, and
leading to vision and eye problems, and even seizures. In many cases
there is addiction. Probably there are immune system disorders, with a
hypersensitivity to these toxins and other chemicals.

Confirming evidence and a general theory are given by Pall (2002):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/909
testable theory of MCS type diseases, vicious cycle of nitric oxide &
peroxynitrite: MSG: formaldehyde-methanol-aspartame:
Martin L. Pall: Murray: 12.9.2 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/946
Functional Therapeutics in Neurodegenerative Disease Part 1/2:
Perlmutter 7.15.99: Murray 1.10.3 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/915
formaldehyde toxicity: Thrasher & Kilburn: Shaham: EPA: Gold: Murray:
Wilson: CIIN: 12.12.2 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/934
24 recent formaldehyde toxicity [Comet assay] reports:
Murray 12.31.2 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/935
Comet assay finds DNA damage from sucralose, cyclamate, saccharin in
mice: Sasaki YF & Tsuda S Aug 2002: Murray 1.1.3 rmforall
[Also borderline evidence, in this pilot study of 39 food additives,
using a test group of 4 mice, for DNA damage from for stomach, colon,
liver, bladder, and lung 3 hr after oral dose of 2000 mg/kg aspartame--
a very high dose.]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/961
genotoxins, Comet assay in mice: Ace-K, stevia fine; aspartame poor;
sucralose, cyclamate, saccharin bad: Y.F. Sasaki Aug 2002:
Murray 1.27.3 rmforall [A detailed look at the data]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/939
aspartame (aspartic acid, phenylalanine) binding to DNA:
Karikas July 1998: Murray 1.5.3 rmforall
Karikas GA, Schulpis KH, Reclos GJ, Kokotos G
Measurement of molecular interaction of aspartame and
its metabolites with DNA. Clin Biochem 1998 Jul; 31(5): 405-7.
Dept. of Chemistry, University of Athens, Greece
http://www.chem.uoa.gr gkokotos@...
"K.H. Schulpis" <inchildh@...> "G.J. Reclos" <reklos@...>

http://www.dorway.com/tldaddic.html 5-page review
Roberts HJ Aspartame (NutraSweet) addiction.
Townsend Letter 2000 Jan; HJRobertsMD@...
http://www.sunsentpress.com/ sunsentpress@...
Sunshine Sentinel Press P.O.Box 17799 West Palm Beach, FL 33416
800-814-9800 561-588-7628 561-547-8008 fax

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/669
1038-page medical text "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic"
published May 30 2001 $ 85.00 postpaid data from 1200 cases
available at http://www.amazon.com
over 600 references from standard medical research

Roberts, Hyman J., 1924- ,
Useful insights for diagnosis, treatment and public heath: an updated
anthology of original research, 2002, 798 pages,
Palm Beach Institute for Medical Research, Inc.
P.O. Box 17799, West Palm Beach, FL 33416
fax 561-547-8008 dr.roberts@...
aspartame disease pages 627-685, 778-780

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/859
RTM: Roberts: the life work of a brilliant clinician:
aspartame toxicity 8.2.2 rmforall

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/790
RTM: Moseley:
review Roberts "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic" 2.7.2 rmforall
************************************************************************