In 2006 and in 2007, I had endless battles with lobbyists and corporate hired guns in the New Mexico Legislature over a bill I created to ban it for New Mexico, sponsored by the Honorable Gerald Ortiz y Pino, easily the most progressive member of the New Mexico Senate. The lobbyists went all out and ganged up to try to eviscerate the bill, then finally strangled the bill in committee. These lobbyists represented Ajinomoto of Japan, the world's largest manufacturer of both aspartame and of Monosodium Glutamate, as well as their predictable American cronies, Coca Cola, Pepsi, plus an assortment of Retail Grocers, Grocery Manufacturers of America, and the American Diabetic Association, which still perpetuates the ludicrous corporate sponsored mythology that if your pancreas is not making enough insulin and you have diabetes, you should be substituting sugar with something that turns to formaldehyde and methanol.
21 of the 112 New Mexico Legislators signed two letters addressed to Dr. Von Eschenbach and to Bush asking them to order that Aspartame's FDA approval be rescinded, on the grounds of its carcinogenicity. (Even Nixon rescinded approval for cyclamates on the same grounds, largely at the behest of Washington consumer advocate lawyer and Nader Raider Jim Turner, plus a few pediatricians and oncologists).
Sadly, all Andy did was reply to the 21 New Mexico legislators with more predictable corporate pleasantries about the 200 (industry-paid for studies "proving" aspartame as safe. He and the rest of the FDA chose to ignore the Sofritti Studies done by the European Foundation for Oncology's work proving aspartame was causing all kinds of cancers, also called Ramazzini Report, after the name of the Foundation.
When you as a mere American consumer write to the FDA about aspartame or the 92 symptoms from its list of attributed symptoms derived from actual consumer complaints, you rarely get any kind of response, unless it is one of those form letters about how safe it is, which refers you to some industry-paid-for pro-aspartame website....
Last year, I said let's try this in Hawaii, since Hawaiian consumer activists were trying to get help with their aspartame banning effort in Hawaii and asking me how to do it. The ban bill failed in the Health Committee when Hawaii Senator David Ige deferred action. Hawaii Senator Ron Menor said in committee that what they should do is create a Resolution, which Dr. Betty Martini and I wrote over one very intense long weekend on the telephone.
That was Senate Concurrent Resolution 191 from 2008, which you can easily read on the Hawaii Legislature website; certainly, no legislative body has ever considered a document more complete and more damning on the subject of Aspartame than this Resolution. I encourage you to read it.
Then, happily, unbeknownst to the lobbyists and the corpporations involved, 44% of the Hawaii Senate, including 9 Committee Chairs and Vice Chairs, signed the Resolution sponsored by the Honorable Suzanne Chun Oakland. Then, one of the other Senators, a lady from Maui, a powerful ex-lobbyist herself, Chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, leaned on the Health Committee Chairman, Senator David Ige (Ige had even signed as cosponsor), telling him we were just spouting "Internet Junk Science," and lo and behold, miracle of miracles: the Resolution never even got a hearing in Hawaii's Senate Health Committee.
Can you see how it is that corporate lobbyists are the scourge, to be polite, of Democracy?
Both Senators have graciously agreed to try again, so the lobbyists will be back in full force, even louder this year, I am sure, saying that such a ban is unnecessary, since Aspartame is SO SAFE, and that it would have to come from FDA itself, that we can't have any balkanized breakup of authority and such a blatant challenge to certain corporate-sponsored and corporate-serving myths of "federal pre-emption" by the FDA.
Aspartame has killed millions, and is literally making hundreds of millions people sick all over the world. I hope you put down your Diet Coke or removed the Sugarless Wrigley's gum long ago, or at least for a few minutes while reading this article , in order to read this with a little more of an open mind and a bit more of that ancient now-disappearing human instinct for survival.
One of my best colleagues in the aspartame effort, Dr. Betty Martini, Honorary Doctor of Humanities and Founder of Mission Possible International, has bumped Obama out of her electoral vote on this issue, after she learned that twenty years ago he either worked for Sidley and Austin or met his wife there because she worked for Sidley and Austin, the lawyers for Monsanto, then the patent holder for Aspartame.
(Monsanto bought those patents from G.D. Searle, the CEO of which in 1981, a Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, forced the approval for Aspartame through the FDA, despite 15 prior years of it being rejected. To spare you the grim details, just google and read this article: RUMSFELD'S BIOWEAPON LEGACY)
Today, the Japanese giant, Ajinomoto owns these patents and makes most of the world's aspartame in Japan, France, and Georgia, USA. The Georgia factory sends tankers full of aspartame to their biggest client, Coca Cola, with workers wearing Hazardous Materials suits, etc. China makes a lot of Aspartame too, but those details are somewhat obscured behind the Red Curtain, so to speak.
Because of the lobbyist/harlots working for these companies and all of the industry fronts and associations of grocers and soft drink bottlers, my sole real hope after January 2009, lies with the FDA's NEXT commissioner, which I implore must be a true consumer protectionist, instead of the corporate lackeys and apologists we have had, who just rubber stamp ultimately whatever Industries like Big Pharma and Big Junk Food want, or whatever they want to keep making money with, the public's health be damned.
I will skip the remaining litany of the regulatory whoredom that goes on at the FDA, and how all they can respond with after a crisis erupts is their usual Congressional Mantra of "GIVE US MORE MONEY, IF YOU WANT US TO FIX WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!" which comes out in official pronouncements from the FDA, like immature birds chirping and squawking for their parent birds to keep feeding them.
But this must not be the case anymore. It can't go on like this, this "business as usual." People have died, and are continually dying from Aspartame; in so many other product liability realms, even more people are dying preventable deaths and early deaths resulting from American corporate greed and regulatory sloppiness run amok.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
