A Brilliant Brain

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world."

— Ephesians 6:12

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Throughout this series, we have documented individual mechanisms of mineral depletion as if they were separate phenomena — soil degradation, water fluoridation, iron fortification, pharmaceutical interference, RDA reduction, seminal zinc loss. Each was presented with its own evidence, its own timeline, its own institutional actors.

This post connects the dots.

Not with speculation. With names, dates, corporate acquisitions, regulatory appointments, patent filings, litigation documents, and the exposed internal communications of the entities involved. The pattern that emerges is one in which a remarkably small number of interconnected institutions and individuals appear at multiple nodes of the mineral depletion architecture.

Whether this represents coordinated intent or emergent institutional behavior is a question this post will not answer. The documented facts are presented. The reader can assess motive independently.

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Act I: The Searle-Rumsfeld-FDA Nexus (1977–1985)

The Company

G.D. Searle & Company was a pharmaceutical and chemical corporation based in Skokie, Illinois. In the 1960s, Searle chemist James Schlatter accidentally discovered aspartame, a synthetic sweetener approximately 200 times sweeter than sucrose. Searle applied for FDA approval in 1973.

The Problem

The FDA's own scientists had serious concerns. In 1977, an FDA task force investigating Searle's safety studies found the work so deficient that the agency took the unprecedented step of requesting the U.S. Attorney's office to convene a grand jury to investigate potential criminal fraud in the submission of safety data. This was the first time in its history that the FDA had requested criminal investigation of a food additive manufacturer.

The Fix

The U.S. Attorney assigned to the case was Samuel Skinner, based in Chicago. Before the grand jury could be convened, Searle's law firm — Sidley Austin — offered Skinner a job. Skinner recused himself from the case. His interim replacement, William Conlon, also later took a position with Sidley Austin. The statute of limitations expired. The grand jury was never convened. The criminal investigation died.

That same year — 1977 — Searle hired Donald Rumsfeld as CEO. Rumsfeld was a former U.S. Congressman, former White House Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford, and the youngest Secretary of Defense in American history (1975–1977). His appointment was explicitly strategic: Searle needed political capital, not scientific capital, to navigate its regulatory crisis.

The Override

In September 1980, the FDA's own Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) — three independent scientists convened to evaluate aspartame — concluded that aspartame should not be approved pending further investigation of brain tumor associations. The PBOI stated it had "not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive."

In January 1981, Rumsfeld reportedly stated in a Searle sales meeting that he was going to use his "political pull in Washington, rather than scientific means" to get aspartame approved within the year.

Ronald Reagan was inaugurated on January 20, 1981. Rumsfeld served on Reagan's presidential transition team. The day after inauguration — January 21, 1981 — Searle resubmitted its application for aspartame approval.

Reagan's transition team, which included Rumsfeld, selected Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. as the new FDA Commissioner. Hayes was a pharmacologist with no previous experience in food additive regulation. He did, however, have a prior working relationship with Rumsfeld through Department of Defense chemical warfare research.

An FDA commissioner's panel was established to review the PBOI's concerns. When it became clear the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 vote, Hayes installed a sixth member, deadlocking the panel. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame's favor.

On July 15, 1981, in one of his first official acts, Hayes overruled the Public Board of Inquiry, ignored the recommendations of three of his own six internal FDA scientists who advised against approval, and approved aspartame for use in dry foods.

In 1983, Hayes approved aspartame for use in beverages — vastly expanding its market. Shortly after, Hayes resigned from the FDA under allegations of impropriety. He briefly served as Provost at New York Medical College, then took a position as senior medical advisor at Burson-Marsteller — the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and G.D. Searle.

As far as we can tell, he has never spoken publicly about aspartame since.

The Acquisition and the Payout

In 1985, Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle. Rumsfeld reportedly received a $12 million bonus from the acquisition — significant money at the time. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame's regulatory history, including the PBOI finding that it "might induce brain tumors."

Monsanto now controlled both aspartame (via NutraSweet) and what would become the most consequential herbicide in agricultural history.

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Act II: Monsanto, Glyphosate, and the Chelation of Minerals from the Food Supply

The Molecule

Glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup — was brought to market by Monsanto in 1974. Its primary mechanism of action as a herbicide is inhibition of the EPSPS enzyme in the shikimate pathway, which plants use to synthesize aromatic amino acids.

But glyphosate has another well-documented chemical property: it is a chelating agent — a molecule that binds metal ions.

The chelating properties of phosphonate compounds (the chemical class to which glyphosate belongs) were documented in a 1964 Stauffer Chemical Company patent for aminomethylenephosphinic acids, which described their utility as chelating agents, wetting agents, and chemical intermediates. While the precise claim that "glyphosate was patented as a chelator" has been contested by Monsanto-affiliated scientists (Swarthout et al. 2018, funded by Monsanto), the chelating properties of glyphosate itself are not in dispute in the peer-reviewed literature.

The 2018 review by Mertens et al. in Environmental Science and Pollution Research (PMC5823954) stated: "Glyphosate is also known as a potent chelator for minerals, a property that has been observed decades ago... this potential additional environmental risk was never adequately considered in the regulatory risk assessment."

What Glyphosate Chelates

Glyphosate's three functional groups (amino, carboxylate, and phosphonate) form covalent bonds with divalent metal cations. The minerals it chelates in soil and plant tissue include:

Iron, manganese, calcium, magnesium — documented by Cakmak et al. (2009, European Journal of Agronomy), who found that glyphosate application significantly reduced seed concentrations of Ca, Mg, Fe, and Mn in soybean. The researchers concluded that glyphosate interferes with uptake and retranslocation of these minerals "most probably by binding and thus immobilizing them."

Zinc — Nilsson found that glyphosate impeded movement of Zn²⁺ in plant tissue. Bott et al. (2008, Plant and Soil) documented glyphosate-induced impairment of micronutrient status including Mn and Zn in glyphosate-resistant soybean.

Boron — included among the minerals chelated by glyphosate according to the Detox Project's review of the literature, citing multiple studies.

Eker et al. (2006, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry) demonstrated that foliar-applied glyphosate "substantially reduced uptake and transport of iron and manganese" in sunflower plants, with the formation of metal-glyphosate complexes identified as the mechanism.

The critical point: these are the same minerals this blog series has identified as essential for cognitive function, hormonal health, and neurological integrity. Zinc, magnesium, iron, manganese, boron — the very substrate the human brain requires — are the minerals glyphosate preferentially binds.

The Explosion in Usage

Glyphosate usage was modest from 1974 through the mid-1990s because the herbicide killed crops as well as weeds, limiting where it could be applied.

In 1996, Monsanto introduced Roundup Ready genetically engineered crops — soybeans, corn, and cotton modified to survive glyphosate application. This allowed farmers to spray glyphosate directly on growing crops for the first time.

The result, documented by Benbrook (2016, Environmental Sciences Europe, PMC5044953):

• U.S. agricultural glyphosate use rose 300-fold from 1974 to 2014 (from 0.8 million to 250 million pounds per year)
• Global agricultural use rose 14.6-fold from 1995 to 2014 (from 113 million to 1.65 billion pounds)
• Two-thirds of all glyphosate ever applied in the U.S. was sprayed in just the last decade of that period
• By 2014, enough glyphosate was applied to deposit approximately one pound of active ingredient on every harvested acre of U.S. cropland

The same company that acquired the aspartame portfolio in 1985 engineered a crop system that saturated the global food supply with a mineral-chelating compound by the late 1990s. The crops that absorbed glyphosate and its chelated mineral complexes entered the diets of billions of people and the feed supply of the livestock those people consume.

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Act III: The Ghostwriting Machine

If glyphosate's chelation of essential minerals represented a potential public health concern, the peer-reviewed literature should have flagged it aggressively. It did not. The reason became clear only through litigation.

Beginning in 2017, lawsuits alleging that Roundup caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma forced Monsanto to disclose millions of pages of internal documents. These documents — now known as the Monsanto Papers — revealed systematic corporate manipulation of the scientific record.

Internal emails showed that Monsanto employees proposed ghostwriting scientific papers and having outside academics sign their names to the work. In one email, a Monsanto employee suggested "keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak. Recall that is how we handled Williams Kroes & Munro, 2000."

That paper — Williams, Kroes, and Munro (2000), published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology — concluded that glyphosate posed no health risk to humans. It became one of the most cited papers in the glyphosate safety literature, in the top 0.1% of all glyphosate-related citations, and was used by regulatory agencies worldwide to justify continued approval.

In November 2025, that paper was finally retracted — 25 years after publication, 8 years after the ghostwriting was exposed. The retraction notice, written by the journal's co-editor-in-chief Martin van den Berg, stated that the paper was "based solely on unpublished studies from Monsanto," ignored "multiple other long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies," and that "the apparent contributions of Monsanto employees as co-writers" were never disclosed. The journal "lost confidence in the results and conclusions of the article."

The Monsanto Papers also revealed:

Regulatory capture: Internal emails documented coordination between Monsanto and Jess Rowland, a senior EPA official leading the agency's assessment of glyphosate's cancer risk, who worked with the company to suppress independent safety reviews.

An "Intelligence Fusion Center": A sophisticated corporate monitoring operation that tracked journalists, activists, and scientists who raised concerns about glyphosate.

Attacks on independent science: When the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a "probable human carcinogen" in 2015, Monsanto mobilized to discredit the finding, generate counter-publications, and pressure journal editors — all documented in internal communications.

The revolving door continued: In 1999, Michael Friedman, deputy FDA commissioner who had insisted aspartame remained safe, left the FDA to become senior vice president of clinical affairs at G.D. Searle (by then a Monsanto subsidiary). The same pattern as Hayes: defend the product while in government, then collect from the company.

Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion and has since set aside over $16 billion to settle Roundup cancer claims, having lost three consecutive jury trials. As of 2024, over 60,000 cases remain pending.

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Act IV: The Convergence Timeline

Now observe the timeline as a single sequence, with the mineral depletion mechanisms we have documented throughout this series mapped against it:

1943–1974: Zinc not included in any RDA despite established essentiality. Thirty-one years of institutional delay.

1964: Stauffer Chemical patents phosphonate compounds (glyphosate's chemical class) describing chelating properties.

1970: Monsanto chemist John Franz identifies glyphosate's herbicidal activity.

1974: First zinc RDA established at 15 mg for men. Glyphosate (Roundup) first sold commercially by Monsanto.

1977: FDA requests first-ever criminal investigation of food manufacturer (Searle). U.S. Attorney offered job by Searle's law firm. Investigation collapses. Rumsfeld hired as Searle CEO.

1980: FDA Public Board of Inquiry concludes aspartame should not be approved.

1981: Rumsfeld, on Reagan's transition team, helps install new FDA commissioner. Hayes overrides own scientists, approves aspartame. Same year Rumsfeld named Outstanding CEO in Pharmaceutical Industry.

1983: Hayes approves aspartame in beverages. Resigns under impropriety allegations. Joins Monsanto/Searle's PR firm.

1985: Monsanto acquires Searle. Now controls both aspartame and Roundup.

1996: Monsanto introduces Roundup Ready crops. Glyphosate use begins exponential increase that will reach 1.65 billion pounds globally by 2014.

2001: Institute of Medicine reduces male zinc RDA from 15 mg to 11 mg (27% cut) using factorial model that estimates seminal zinc loss at 0.1mg/day — underestimating actual loss by 10-30x.

2004: Davis et al. publish in Journal of the American College of Nutrition documenting statistically significant mineral declines in 43 crops between 1950-1999. The period of maximum decline coincides with the intensification of industrial agriculture and the early years of escalating glyphosate use.

2010–2014: Peak glyphosate application period. Two-thirds of all glyphosate ever sprayed in the U.S. is applied in this decade.

2015: IARC classifies glyphosate as probable human carcinogen. Monsanto mobilizes ghostwriting and regulatory pressure to suppress finding.

2017: Monsanto Papers exposed through litigation. Ghostwriting, regulatory capture, and systematic manipulation of scientific record documented.

2025: Williams, Kroes, and Munro (2000) retracted — the most-cited safety paper in glyphosate literature, ghostwritten by Monsanto. The paper that regulatory agencies worldwide relied upon for 25 years was corporate marketing disguised as independent science.

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The Architecture — Not One Mechanism, A Stack

Step back and observe what was constructed:

Layer 1 — Deplete the Soil: Industrial monoculture agriculture, accelerated by Monsanto's Roundup Ready system, depleted soil minerals through intensive cultivation and saturated cropland with a chelating agent that binds zinc, manganese, iron, magnesium, calcium, and boron — reducing their bioavailability to plants and, through the food chain, to humans.

Layer 2 — Deplete the Water: Municipal fluoridation (73% of U.S. population) added a mineral antagonist to the water supply. Fluoride competes with zinc and magnesium for absorption. Water treatment removed naturally occurring trace minerals. The net mineral exchange was negative.

Layer 3 — Fortify with the Wrong Mineral: Flour enrichment added iron but not zinc. Non-heme iron and zinc compete for the same intestinal transporter (DMT1). Excess iron competitively inhibits zinc absorption. The food supply was fortified with zinc's competitor.

Layer 4 — Add Neurotoxic Sweeteners: Aspartame, pushed through FDA approval by Rumsfeld's political intervention over the objections of the agency's own scientists, was introduced into the diet of hundreds of millions of people. Aspartame metabolizes to phenylalanine, which competes with tryptophan for blood-brain barrier transport, impairing serotonin synthesis — the same neurotransmitter pathway that zinc deficiency degrades at the synthesis level.

Layer 5 — Lower the Standard: In 2001, the IOM reduced the male zinc RDA by 27% using a model that underestimated seminal zinc loss by 10-30x. The new "adequate" intake was set below the threshold at which Prasad's research demonstrated functional immune and cognitive impairment.

Layer 6 — Normalize the Deficiency: Serum zinc reference ranges (60-120 mcg/dL) were established by sampling the existing (already depleted) population. Functional impairment occurs at levels the lab report calls "within normal limits."

Layer 7 — Treat the Symptoms, Not the Cause: SSRIs prescribed for depression that zinc deficiency produces. Stimulants prescribed for attention deficit that zinc deficiency creates. PPIs prescribed for gastric issues that further impair mineral absorption. Each pharmaceutical intervention addresses a symptom while deepening the underlying mineral deficit — and each generates ongoing revenue.

Layer 8 — Suppress the Science: When independent researchers identify mechanisms of harm, the corporation ghostwrites counter-studies, captures regulatory officials, operates intelligence surveillance on critics, and pressures journal editors. The most-cited safety paper in the glyphosate literature was corporate marketing wearing a lab coat for 25 years.

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The Recurring Cast

What makes this architecture notable is not the number of mechanisms — complex systems produce complex effects. What makes it notable is how few entities appear at multiple nodes:

Monsanto — produced the herbicide that chelates minerals from soil and plants, engineered the crop system that required that herbicide on 90% of major U.S. crops, acquired the company that produced aspartame, ghostwrote the safety studies that suppressed concern, coordinated with regulators to maintain market position, and operated surveillance against critics.

G.D. Searle — developed aspartame, submitted fraudulent safety data, hired a CEO specifically for political access, had criminal investigation sabotaged through law firm hiring, had product approved over FDA scientists' objections through political appointment of new commissioner.

Donald Rumsfeld — CEO of Searle during the period of regulatory manipulation, member of the presidential transition team that installed the FDA commissioner who overruled the safety ban, reportedly received $12 million when Monsanto acquired Searle. Previously the youngest Secretary of Defense in history; later became Secretary of Defense again (2001-2006) during the period when the IOM reduced zinc RDA and agricultural policy continued to prioritize yield over nutritional density.

The FDA — banned aspartame based on its own scientists' findings, then approved it under political pressure. Multiple officials (Hayes, Friedman) left the agency for positions with the companies they had regulated. Allowed glyphosate residue limits to increase as usage escalated — 50 times more glyphosate is now permitted on corn grain than in 1996.

Burson-Marsteller — the PR firm that employed Hayes after his FDA tenure, served as chief communications firm for both Monsanto and Searle.

Sidley Austin — the law firm that hired both Samuel Skinner (the U.S. Attorney investigating Searle) and William Conlon (his replacement), effectively neutralizing the criminal investigation.

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What This Post Does Not Claim

This post does not claim that any individual or institution deliberately designed a system to deplete the population's mineral status for the purpose of cognitive impairment.

This post documents that:

1. A mineral-chelating herbicide was deployed at unprecedented scale by the same company that pushed a neurotoxic sweetener through regulatory barriers using political rather than scientific means.

2. The regulatory apparatus that should have caught mineral depletion at multiple points — in the soil, in the food supply, in the water, in the RDA standards, in the pharmaceutical interactions — failed at every node.

3. The failures were not random. They involved the same companies, the same law firms, the same PR firms, the same revolving-door pattern between regulator and regulated.

4. When independent science identified problems, the corporate response was not to address the problems but to ghostwrite counter-literature, capture regulators, and surveil critics.

5. The net result — a population depleted of zinc, magnesium, manganese, iron, and boron, with the deficiency symptoms treated by pharmaceuticals that deepen the deficiency — is the observed reality, regardless of whether it was designed or emerged.

Whether these patterns represent conspiracy or convergence, the biochemical outcome is identical: a substrate-depleted population with impaired cognition, suppressed testosterone, degraded impulse control, weakened immunity, and reduced capacity for the kind of critical analysis that would recognize the pattern itself.

The ancients had a word for such arrangements. They called them principalities.

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The Recovery Is the Rebellion

Every post in this series has ended with a protocol. This one is no different, because documentation without remediation is merely an autopsy.

Test your zinc. Understand serum limitations. Request RBC zinc or functional zinc markers if available.

Supplement at Prasad's research dose. 20-40 mg zinc bisglycinate — 2-4x the IOM's demonstrably inadequate RDA.

Eat the organs. Liver, heart, oysters — the ancestral mineral delivery system that bypasses the depleted soil, the chelated food supply, the fluoridated water.

Remove the antagonists. Filter fluoride from drinking water. Minimize processed food (glyphosate residues, iron fortification without zinc). Eliminate aspartame and other synthetic sweeteners.

Build the full stack. Magnesium (threonate, glycinate, malate). Omega-3 (EPA/DHA at 2-3g). Creatine (5-10g). Boron (6-9mg). The neuroprotective compounds in MitoNRG — NAC, ALCAR, ALA, EGCG, sulforaphane, resveratrol.

Account for seminal expenditure. The IOM didn't. You must.

Understand what you are recovering from. Not a deficiency. An architecture. A system of interlocking depletions maintained by interlocking institutions with interlocking personnel, defended by ghostwritten science and captured regulators.

The recovery is not merely supplementation. It is an act of discernment — the recognition that the systems presenting themselves as protectors of your health have documented histories of prioritizing market access over safety, revenue over remediation, and institutional preservation over the people the institutions were created to serve.

A zinc-sufficient man sees this clearly. Which may be precisely why the sufficiency was never prioritized.

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Sources and Documentation

Aspartame/Searle/Rumsfeld Timeline:

• Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review, "The Aspartame Controversy of 1981" (vtuhr.org, 2015)
• Wikipedia, "Aspartame controversy" — compiled from FDA records, Senate hearings, GAO report
• Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, "Sweetheart Deal" (iatp.org)

Glyphosate Chelation:

• Mertens et al. (2018), "Glyphosate, a chelating agent — relevant for ecological risk assessment?" Environ Sci Pollut Res, PMC5823954
• Cakmak et al. (2009), "Glyphosate reduced seed and leaf concentrations of calcium, manganese, magnesium, and iron in non-glyphosate resistant soybean," European Journal of Agronomy 31:3, 114-119
• Eker et al. (2006), "Foliar-applied glyphosate substantially reduced uptake and transport of iron and manganese in sunflower," J Agric Food Chem 54:10019-10025
• Bott et al. (2008), "Glyphosate-induced impairment of plant growth and micronutrient status in glyphosate-resistant soybean," Plant and Soil 312:185-194

Glyphosate Usage Data:

• Benbrook (2016), "Trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally," Environmental Sciences Europe 28:3, PMC5044953

Monsanto Papers / Ghostwriting:

• Science (AAAS), "Journal retracts weed killer study backed by Monsanto, citing 'serious ethical concerns'" (Dec 2025)
• Retraction Watch, "Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed" (Dec 2025)
• Kaurov & Oreskes (2025), "The afterlife of a ghost-written paper," Environmental Science & Policy
• McHenry (2018), "The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the scientific well," Int J Risk Saf Med 29:3-4, PubMed 29843257
• Glenna & Bruce (2021), "Suborning science for profit," Research Policy, ScienceDirect
• U.S. Right to Know, Monsanto Papers document archive (usrtk.org)

Chelation Patent Dispute (noted for completeness):

• Swarthout, Bleeke & Vicini (2018), "Comments for Mertens et al.," Environ Sci Pollut Res, PMC6132386 — Monsanto-affiliated authors contesting chelator patent claim. Note: Does not dispute glyphosate's chelating properties, only the claim it was "patented as a chelator."

Zinc RDA / IOM:

• Institute of Medicine (2001), Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Arsenic, Boron, Chromium, Copper, Iodine, Iron, Manganese, Molybdenum, Nickel, Silicon, Vanadium, and Zinc
• National Research Council (1989), Recommended Dietary Allowances, 10th Edition

Crop Mineral Decline:

• Davis et al. (2004), "Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999," Journal of the American College of Nutrition 23:6, 669-682

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The documentation is the defense. The recovery is the offense. Brain Boost provides the tri-form magnesium the architecture depleted. Omega Minis provide the EPA/DHA the inflammatory environment demands. MitoNRG provides the neuroprotective compounds — NAC, ALCAR, ALA, EGCG, sulforaphane, resveratrol — that arm the mitochondria against the oxidative burden this system creates. The full stack at Naturologie →