One Hawaii activist wrote these Senators and Representatives and asked them to prepare their own apology to the people of Hawaii for taking little or no action. Meetings will continue; press coverage may dwindle but gradually the word gets out via the Internet and concerned principled Hawaiians with huge emailing lists; a radio show here or there; an article in small papers; word of mouth, etc. So it is not at all hopeless for the 2009 legislative session.
Senator Ige’s staff asked me: “What do you care about what happens in Hawaii?” I answered that I care about what happens to everyone, especially those afflicted with entirely avoidable illnesses resulting from diet sodas, sugarless gum, or dumping Equal into their coffee.” (Heating aspartame to 175 degrees transforms it into diketopiperazine, a proven cause of brain tumors, recognized by toxicologists and oncologists all over the world).
In a larger sense, though, Hawaii is a perfect test situation for such legislation. If the Island’s health authorities cannot control what comes to its shores as imported food products in order to protect its citizens, then the corporations do indeed rule our nation entirely, exercising their control through their FDA apparatchiks.
So would also be Alaska, since such a large percentage of its food products are imported from the Lower 48. But in Alaska, with such a Republican majority, it is difficult and almost impossible to speak of aspartame’s regulatory history, its having been forced through the FDA by Donald Rumsfeld, when he was CEO of G.D.Searle, back in 1981; as part of the Reagan Transition Team, he was able to arrange the appointment of Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner, who then immediately overturned 15 years of prior FDA objections, based on obvious neurotoxicity, and issued an order approving aspartame.
Hawaii, with its 80% Democrat legislature, is better ground for such illuminating education; compound that by the major destruction of the sugar cane agriculture and refining on most of the islands by the advent of artificial sweeteners, and you might conclude that such legislation could be passed, even if not one of the legislators is genuinely concerned about Health or about Children, which of course, they all profess to be deeply concerned about. We presented medical testimonial letters from all but one of the top aspartame physicians in the world to the House Health Committee; the effect was minimal. We sent copies to all of the major newspapers and most of the minor one is Hawaii; the effect was minimal.
Unfortunately, the newspapers have been as slow as organic Jamaican molasses to cover these questions. The deputy legislative columnist for the largest, The Honolulu Advertiser, just a few days ago wrote that everything was safe about aspartame because the Department of Agriculture continued to approve it? Department of Agriculture? Please....if the capitol correspondents and the proofreaders at the largest paper in Hawaii missed that error, what hope would there ever be to educate Hawaiians through that newspaper, let alone get a bill passed that would require a serious level of medical and neurotoxicological comprehension.
Fortunately, there is the Hawaii Reporter, an entirely online publication in Honolulu, which carried extensive articles by physicians, victims, and activists. It is published by a really fine editor, Malia Zimmerman, who has had her own share of legislative battles, especially with the former Governor of Hawaii, Ben Cayetano.
The papers on Molokai have carried articles about their particularly active inhabitants; Senator Kalani English and Representative Mele Carroll, the House bill sponsor, represent Molokai in the Legislature, and the Molokai Dispatch has published a long article on the frightening history of aspartame.
A few TV newscasters, like Sabrina Hall and Dick Allgire, have done extensive stories. Allgire’s was a very compelling personal story of ghastly migraines and cluster headaches which stopped when he stopped drinking diet sodas, a story which was posted on rense.com, and was then picked up and posted on many mainland medical sites.
The other papers, like the Honolulu Star Bulletin, Honolulu’s second largest, or the other dailies and weeklies on Maui, Kauai, or the Big Island, Hawaii/Hilo, have published nothing about the legislation, as far as we know. The University of Hawaii paper or the Brigham Young paper: not a word. You might think that some aspiring biochemistry student or professor of physiology would write about it? Not a word.
Efforts to contact and obtain the support of medical professors at the University of Hawaii Medical School largely failed, even though the obvious impact on Native Hawaiians with an inclination towards diabetes should have at least piqued their medical curiosity. But not a word, except from one physiology professor who ridiculed all of the medical articles we sent to all of them as flawed, terrible, anecdotal, etc., until he finally admitted that he was hooked on diet sodas himself.
TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR THIS SENATE BILL: IF YOU WANT TO HELP BY MAKING 4 PHONE CALLS AND/OR SENDING 4 EMAILS TO HONOLULU, PLEASE DO SO! AND THEN SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES, AND FAMILY!
Please put these names and numbers out to the lists as soon as possible: ask everyone, especially victims and physicians, to please make 4 phone calls to the top Senate leaders in Hawaii as soon as possible....this is absolutely our last chance to get this done.
If Health Committee Chairman and Majority Floor Leader David Ige doesn't schedule the hearing for the bill in the next 48 hours, Senate Bill 2506, it dies, killed by the clock. We can't let them do this!
Senator Ige is among the top four; the other three are here too:
Senator Colleen Hanabusa, President of Hawaii Senate, phone: 808-586-7793; Fax 808-586-7797, mailto:senhanabusa@Capitol.hawaii.gov
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