Greetings from New Mexico!
I am very grateful for the broad Hawaiian support thus far for the bill to ban aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener, from human consumption or sale, which I hope will be heard soon and strongly support in the Senate Health Committee and in the House Health, and Consumer Protection and Commerce Committees. I was the main force behind this massive effort in the NM legislature in 2006 and 2007, and I can share with readers a few insights on the pitfalls and stumbling blocks that will be thrown at this legislation by corporate lobbyists representing some very evil doing corporations in the USA and in Japan which manufacture and use this poison to save a few bucks on adding real sugar as a sweetener.
I have been discussing this at length with Dr. Adrian Chang of Honolulu, the nuclear engineer and force behind the very brilliant and ultimately successful effort to stop fluoride being added to municipal water supplies, thanks to the Oahu County government's decision to not add fluoride.
I am very sure that these Hawaii bills to ban Aspartame can be passed, despite corporate-serving and corporate-lobbyist-advanced theories that all of these concerns are entirely pre-empted by the federal authorities, or that Hawaii state government would automatically be sued by manufacturers. About the worst that could happen if one of these bills passes and is signed by Gov. Lingle is that the FDA Commissioner, Dr. Von Eschenbach, would be forced to revoke the approval for aspartame, which should rightly have been done long ago.
This legislative passage could occur with the right help from the Medical community in Hawaii, particularly the experts in toxicology, internal medicine, pediatrics, oncology and biochemistry at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine. I encourage Hawaiians to contact whomever you consider an both ally and an impeccable and unimpeachable source of testimony at the Medical school and in the Medical community, who can come and testify and/or write a strong letter to the Committee members.
We can generate strong letters of support from the three top mainland physicians in this regard, who are really the top leaders in the world on aspartame's proven medical and neurodegenerative harm, and all readers of this would do well to easily google and read their articles:
HJ Roberts,Internist; Russell Blaylock, Neurosurgeon; and Ralph Walton, Psychiatry. All wrote great letters to the entire New Mexico Legislature members.
In New Mexico, we were simply overwhelmed by the $2 or $3 million the corporations involved spent to eviscerate the bill, and also there was a very regrettable and probably avoidable strong partisan context, since so much criticism was leveled at Donald Rumsfeld, aspartame progenitor when he was CEO of G.D. Searle, the patent holder, back in 1981, when Rummy forced the appointment of a crony, Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, as FDA Commissioner, in exchange for agreeing to approve aspartame, despite 16 years of the FDA saying no, based on the obvious and rudimentary toxic biochemistry of its metabolized components.
The first salvos against ignorance and for true consumer protection in Hawaii have very recently been fired in the news report on KHON-2, a rather conservative station and Fox Affiliate (no relation to me, by the way) in which the predicatble professor from the Medical school basically said "a little bit doesn't or won't hurt you." Of course, this is absurd: a whole lot of little bits of poison are cumulative and end up killing you, whether through cancer, heart disease, Multiple Sclerosis, etc.
We hope to see a Hawaii Capitol Press conference with the bills' sponsors(Kalani English, Suzanne Chun Oakland, Mele Carroll, and Calvin Say) to illuminate the press about the medical harm done by aspartame!
I have communicated a basic letter to the editor to all of the press and all of the radio stations in Hawaii, but few have responded thus far. Nothing will really take shape, I fear, without massive press coverage, and we were able to achieve that in New Mexico, which included all of the main television stations in New Mexico.
Readers should watch the online posting of the brilliant documentary, SWEET MISERY, the DVD by a recovered victim of aspartame poisoning in Tucson, Cori Brackett, the most convincing possible communique on this subject, according to the New Mexico Senate sponsor, Jerry Ortiz y Pino.
Please let me hear from you if you have questions or want to contact your friends, family, or colleagues in Hawaii to get this done....
Thank you, and Mahalo,
Stephen Fox Managing Editor of Santa Fe Sun News Founder, New Millennium Fine Art
217 W. Water St. Santa Fe, NM 87501 505 983-2002 stephen@santafefineart.com