New Mexico Aspartame Bills Charge FDA Inaction

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22 Jan 2006 12:38:24 -0000

Health Supreme Update: New Mexico Aspartame Bills Charge FDA

Inaction

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Health Supreme Update: New Mexico Aspartame Bills Charge FDA Inaction

 

 

2006.01.22 13:38:22

 

 

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New Mexico Aspartame Bills Charge FDA Inaction

Categories

Health

 

Can federal approval of a food ingredient prevent States from acting

on a health issue they feel needs to be resolved? The question will be

tested in the New Mexico State legislature.

 

Activists and New Mexico legislators are calling for new rules that

will take aspartame, a dangerous artificial sweetener, off the market.

They criticize the FDA for its continued inaction, even in the face of

numerous and serious adverse reactions reported by consumers.

 

Aspartame was approved in 1981 over the objections of the FDA's own

scientists, when Donald Rumsfeld, former CEO of aspartame maker

Searle, called in his " political markers " . Since that time, the FDA

has been stonewalling adverse reaction reports on the sweetener.

 

Both original studies on rodents and a recent long-term Italian study

make serious adverse reactions to the sweetener a high probability.

There have been several calls to ban the sweetener, the latest one in

the UK, where Roger Williams, a UK member of Parliament, cited

" compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance to

be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether " .

 

New Mexico legislators Irvin Harrison and Gerals Ortiz y Pino have

introduced identical bills (here is the House version) in both houses

of the state legislature that would require action against the

sweetener in New Mexico, even though the FDA refuses to change its own

stand.

 

Stephen Fox reports:

 

- - -

 

New era of consumer protection possible, if legislature acts on

aspartame ban

 

Stephen Fox

January 20, 2006

(first published in the Free New Mexican)

 

Bills to ban Neurotoxic Sweetener Aspartame in New Mexico Legislature

will result in a New Era of Consumer Protection in the USA, but their

survival and further progress in short session depends entirely on

Gov. Richardson and Senate President Pro Tempore Ben Altamirano.

 

Aspartame's days may be numbered, given the implications of this

national precedent for a state legislature to consider prohibiting

specifically this FDA approved product. Aspartame, sometimes called

NutraSweet, is a proven neurotoxin and carcinogen found in 6000 food

products and in over 500 pharmaceutical preparations, despite clear

proof of its toxicity. For example, the Ramazzini Foundation Report is

posted on the website of the USA National Institute of Health. As a

result there are just the beginnings of Congressional inquiries to the

FDA Commissioner as to why the FDA has not rescinded its approval for

aspartame.

 

New Mexico need not wait for the cumbersome corrupt and underinformed

FDA bureaucracy to even start to get into gear.

 

Albuquerque Democrat, Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino, and Gallup Navajo

Democrat, Representative Irvin Harrison, have introduced legislation

that clearly moves New Mexico forward in terms of protecting citizens'

health from this neurodegenerative sweetener, resulting from the

complete breakdown in sound approval functions at the US FDA going

back to 1981 and 1983, no more clearly exemplified than in the case

artificial sweetener, Aspartame.

 

Harrison introduced House Bill 202, and the Senate version, Senate

Bill 250, was introduced by the Honorable Gerald Ortiz y Pino.

 

Regulatory mechanisms at the state level have largely failed, been

postponed and even ignored, due to corporate pressure and

manipulation, largely by Ajinomoto of Japan, the world's largest

Aspartame and Monosodium Glutamate manufacturer. The eventual and

inevitable New Mexico ban through legislative means is a vital

international precedent, one that could precipitate a new era of

Consumer Protection in the United States and in other nations.

 

The bills' author and sponsors believe that these bills are within the

conceptual matrix not only of Governor Richardson's Year of the Child

and Healthy Kids legislative initiatives, but also that they are

consistent within the Governor's views that because the FDA " isn't

doing anything, " every state needs to take back and to exercise some

of the power ceded earlier to the Federal level, going back to the

creation of the Food and Drug Administration in the Roosevelt era.

 

New Mexico statutes on protecting Health, particularly statutes

regarding poisonous and deleterious food additives in the New Mexico

Food Act are completely consistent with the 10th Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution, as well as numerous US Supreme Court and U.S. Court of

Appeals decisions in related matters. Many recent U.S. Court of

Appeals decisions confirm that in health matters, federal and state

jurisdictions need not be competitive or exclusionary, given that the

goal of both is to protect health.

 

Soft drink companies would be smarter not to fight efforts to achieve

freedom from neurotoxic multi-potentially carcinogenic sweetener

additives. Why not immediately switch to a non-toxic harmless natural

sweetener like Stevia? Indeed, conversations between Coca Cola's

lobbyist and Vice President of New Mexico operations and the bill's

author occurred January 17, in which the bill's author recommended

precisely such a course of action to the CEO, President, and Chairman

of the Board of Coca Cola, presumably by now relayed by the lobbyist

to them.

 

We could (but won't) write the predictable Coca Cola advertisement:

 

" America, we have been listening to your concerns for health, and

for those reasons, we are switching the sweetener in our 'diet'

products to Stevia, which will take ten years to build new factories,

starting in 2009. "

 

By doing so, Coca Cola (or whichever manufacturer implements this

bright idea first) would make billions of dollars and win millions of

new patrons.

 

The inevitability of soft drink companies to get rid of aspartame,

acesulfame K, and sucralose by the world's largest soft drink

manufacturers, of course, does nothing to remove, obviate or conceal

some other forgotten neurotoxicities in that product, like that of

Coke's major ingredient, phosphoric acid, which is also used to prime

unfinished steel before it is painted. New Mexicans might wonder " What

does phosphoric acid do to one's chromosomes, if it can do that to raw

steel? "

 

Hoping to hide behind their product's FDA approval, industry lobbyists

and corporate lawyers will bitterly complain to legislative committees

that any state action to ban an incontrovertibly proven neurotoxic

multi-potential carcinogen like aspartame is automatically preempted

by the Supremacy Clause and the Interstate Commerce Clause in the

Constitution.

 

They would like the Legislature to accept the corporate vantage point

that such a preemptive protective action by the state of New Mexico is

therefore impossible. This argument, accompanied by non-credible

threats of litigation, worked in 2005 to postpone the EIB's scheduled

5-day hearings on Aspartame in July 2006 until January 2007. Such

considerations are incorporated in the Legislative intent sections of

the two bills.

 

Corporate lobbyists are already working against these bills, even

having contacted numerous members of the NM Senate to ask them to not

sign the bill as co-sponsors! We expect these same corporate minions

to bring fat stacks of legal arguments to committee members similar to

those already submitted to Mr. Trigg, Chief of Administrative Division

in the Attorney General's office, by one of several lawyers working

for the world's largest Aspartame and Monosodium Glutamate

manufacturer, Ajinomoto of Japan, with the hope of overwhelming and

intimidating committee members, as they have so far successfully done

in many other states. Perhaps Mr. Trigg would be happy to forward to

you this document, if you call him and leave a polite message.

 

Those corporate legal theories cannot be superimposed on New Mexico's

urgent need to protect the health of its citizens, and they will be

soundly refuted by more compelling stacks of medical commentaries by

leading physicians, and of legal arguments by, for example, Jim Turner

of the Washington D.C. law firm of Swankin and Turner, the consumer

lawyer whose efforts precipitated President Nixon's 1969 order to the

Commissioner of the FDA to rescind the approval for CYCLAMATES, yet

another neurotoxic carcinogenic artificial sweetener. [Did you ever

think for a moment that you would miss Nixon?] Turner with Ralph Nader

is co-author of The Chemical Feast (1970), and the Santa Fe Library

has one copy.

 

For Molecular Biologist Professor at University of Chicago's comments

on aspartame: www.wnho.net/molecular_biologists_aspartame_commentary.htm

 

Lobbyists will fight this legislation right up to the ink drying as

(we hope) they are signed by Governor Richardson. For much more

detailed information on corporate efforts to ruin pro child health and

nutrition legislation that cites specific examples of what lobbyists

have done and where and when, revealing their vicious tactics in toto,

please read the extraordinary compilations thereof by Hastings College

of Health Policy Law Professor Michele Simon, for example:

 

http://www.organicconsumers.org/school/coke.cfm

 

http://www.wnho.net/consumer_protection_advocates.htm

 

http://www.wnho.net/megacorporate_interests.htm

 

Some of Coca Cola's actions have resulted in their products being

banned by Universities in New York and in Michigan:

 

http://www.killercoke.org/crimes.htm

 

For the very best analysis on how aspartame violates both federal and

state statutes on adulteration, by Dr. Betty Martini, Honorary Doctor

of Humanities, please go to:

http://www.rense.com/general67/aspar.htm

 

For more information on the Ramazzini Foundation for Oncology study

proving carcinogenicity, go to the website for the United States

National Institute of Health, where it has been posted since

mid-November 2005, with seemingly little comprehension of this in any

branch of government. If you don't do Internet, call the office of

Senator Bingaman and Congressman Udall.

 

Other key documents are located at the extensive website for the World

 

Natural Health Organization, http://www.wnho.net, click on aspartame.

Particularly noteworthy are the medical texts and commentaries by

H.J.Roberts, M.D., author of Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic,

as well as his later article, Aspartame Disease: An FDA Approved Epidemic.

 

If you have ingested aspartame in " diet " beverages, " sugarless " gum,

blue packet of Equal, " low-fat " yogurt, and at least 6000 other food

products, or in hundreds of pharmaceutical preparations, vitamins,

aspirin, and if you want to begin the long process of detoxifying, at

the http://www.wnho.net site, read Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock's

article " What to do if you have used Aspartame, " found at

http://www.wnho.net, click on aspartame. Blaylock is also author of

Excitotoxins: the Taste that Kills.

 

To learn more of Governor Richardson's thinking on these consumer

matters, please contact his Director of Consumer Protection Affairs.

 

To learn about possible Congressional action regarding the FDA

rescinding its approval of Aspartame, not only in food, but also in

hundreds of pharmaceutical preparations for children and for adults,

and particularly inquiries into the fact that Gulf War Syndrome could

be a euphemism for neurodegenerative effects from diketopiperazine,

one of the chemicals released when diet beverages are left in the sun

in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and drunk in large quantities by

U.S. soldiers, please contact:

 

U.S. Congressman Tom Udall, (202) 225-6190

 

U.S. Congressman Lane Evans, Chairman of House Veterans Committee

(202) 225-5905 lane.evans

 

U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman

Toll-free (in NM): 1-800-443-8658 DC: (202) 224-5521

senator_bingaman

 

 

Read the identical text in both House and Senate versions at the

website for the New Mexico Legislature.

 

Media Inquiries:

 

Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino District 12

 

County: Bernalillo

 

Capitol Phone:

 

986-4380

 

_________

 

Representative Irvin Harrison District 5

 

Counties: McKinley & San Juan

 

Capitol Office Phone:

 

986-4464

 

________

 

Stephen Fox

 

Stephen Fox is a Santa Fe gallery owner with keen interests in

landscapes, Native American art, and nutrition related legislation. He

and Tom Udall's mother, Lee, now deceased, and Tom's daughter, Amanda

Cooper, laid out the concept of a New Mexico Nutrition Council one

wintry evening in 1997 while stuffing envelopes early in Tom's first

Congressional campaign. He believes that all of these initiatives are

entirely consistent with Governor Richardson's Year of the Child and

Healthy Kids efforts. Until the Nutrition Council legislation is

passed and signed by Richardson, Fox describes it as an Acting

Nutrition Council.

 

stephen