What’s the current aspartame story? Well, it’s more saga than simple story but let’s put it in a nut shell. It goes like this.
Millions of people consume the chemical known as aspartame. This makes billions of dollars for the manufacturer and all the companies who add the chemical to products you consume. The very large sums of money involved are an essential part of this tale.
The chemical can be added to consumer products because it is approved by the FDA. How it achieved its approved status is a chapter in this story that’s filled with corruption, politics and intrigue, at the least. One of the villains is Donald Rumsfeld, which should come as little surprise. (For example, see the video at http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages.rumsfeld2.html)
The FDA was not initially so incompetent. As Pat Thomas stated in the September 2005 issue of The Ecologist:
Concerns over aspartame’s toxicity meant that for eight years, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) denied it approval, effectively keeping it off the world market. This caution was based on compelling evidence, brought to light by numerous eminent scientists, litigators and consumer groups, that aspartame contributed to serious central nervous system damage and had been shown to cause cancer in animals. Eventually, however, political muscle, won out over scientific rigour, and aspartame was approved for use in 1981 (see timeline for details).
The FDA’s about-turn opened the floodgates for aspartame’s swift approval by more than 70 regulatory authorities around the world. But, as the remarkable history of the sweetener shows, the clean bill of health given to it by government regulators – whose raison d’etre should be to protect the public from harm – is simply not worth the paper it is printed on.
For far too many years aspartame has poisoned countless millions of people. The chemical has been linked to several devestating central nervous system disorders. Like sheep, most doctors foolishly trust the FDA to look after us, and hence fail to practice scientifically, even intelligently. As the same article quoted above indicates, one doctor was different.
When aspartame was approved for use, Dr HJ Roberts, director of the Palm Beach Institute for Medical Research, had no reason to doubt the FDA’s decision. ‘But my attitude changed,’ he says, ‘after repeatedly encountering serious reactions in my patients that seemed justifiably linked to aspartame.’ Twenty years on, Roberts has coined the phrase ‘aspartame disease’ to describe the wide range of adverse effects he has seen among aspartame-guzzling patients.
He estimates: ‘Hundreds of thousands of consumers, more likely millions, currently suffer major reactions to products containing aspartame. Today, every physician probably encounters aspartame disease in everyday practice, especially among patients with illnesses that are undiagnosed or difficult to treat.’
As a guide for other doctors, Roberts, a recognised expert in difficult diagnoses, has published a lengthy series of case studies, Aspartame Disease: an ignored epidemic (Sunshine Sentinel Press), in which he meticulously details his treatment of 1,200 aspartame-sensitive individuals, or ‘reactors’, encountered in his own practice. Following accepted medical procedure for detecting sensitivities to foods, Roberts had his patients remove aspartame from their diets. With nearly two thirds of reactors, symptoms began to improve within days of removing aspartame, and improvements were maintained as long as aspartame was kept out of their diet.
Roberts’ case studies parallel much of what was revealed in the FDA’s report on adverse reactions to aspartame – that toxicity often reveals itself through central nervous system disorders and compromised immunity. His casework shows that aspartame toxicity can mimic the symptoms of and/or worsen several diseases that fall into these broad categories (see the box above).
In fact, you may be interested to learn that aspartame can produce symptoms that mimic all of the following:
- multiple sclerosis
- Parkinson’s disease
- Alzheimer’s disease
- fibromyalgia
- arthritis
- multiple chemical sensitivity
- chronic fatigue syndrome
- attention deficit disorder
- panic disorder
- depression and other psychological disorders
- lupus
- diabetes and diabetic complications
- birth defects
- lymphoma
- Lyme disease
- hypothyroidism
With growing mountains of clinical evidence one might imagine that the FDA would correct its error and act to protect consumers, which is supposed to be its job. However, Dr Betty Martini of Mission Possible International describes their performance like this.
Ten years ago FDA stopped listing victim complaints when they passed 10,000, and FDA no longer admits there ever was a list. It named 92 symptoms including seizures and death. FDA is now NutraSweet’s Washington Branch Office, faithfully promoting aspartame and publishing their propaganda, ignoring enormous injury to our people and rejecting a mountain of medical evidence. Who ever heard a Federal agency saying it was wrong? In the showcase of effete corrupt bureaucracies FDA proudly sits right there beside FEMA.
Actually you may like to see http://www.wnho.net/viva_new_mexico.htm to follow up on some of the links provided in Dr Martini’s article. That article introduced what is currently unfolding in New Mexico. Things didn’t go as smoothly as Dr Martini hoped back in October of 2005. The New Mexico chapter of this story is an interesting one and it is where we find some significant heroes locked in a David and Goliath like battle.
Dr Roberts was interviewed recently by Dr Carolyn Dean, MD, ND and Elissa Meininger for an article available at http://www.newswithviews.com/Dean/carolyn26.htm. He is reported to have said:
Aspartame should not have been approved in the first place. It was approved arbitrarily and unilaterally on the advice of in house FDA scientists. However, the General Accounting Office and a public board of inquiry both agreed that it should not be approved. After more than 20 years of clinical encounters and research and newer information, we now know that it constitutes an imminent public health hazard. New Mexico should be given credit for a lot of courage in looking into this matter because the Federal Government has not pursued it in any way it should have considering the large number of complaints.
So just what is happening in New Mexico? Dean and Meininger describe it like this.
The man most responsible for this hullabaloo, that has been going on since 1999, is an art gallery owner, Stephen Fox, who, along with his fellow citizens, just got fed up enough about aspartame in the food supply to take action. Fox, after doing his legal homework, sat down with a pencil and wrote legislation to create a state Nutrition Council with statutory powers to challenge the FDA if it mistakenly approves known carcinogens and neurotoxic food additives. The 2005 version of the bill passed the state Senate by an overwhelming 32-1 but after corporate lobbyists arm twisted their way through the cloakroom, it was killed in the House by a filibuster on the last day of the session.
Fox and his army of outraged citizens, doctors, lawyers, activists and victims, armed with the knowledge that New Mexico has the legal authority to ban aspartame, have just turned up the volume and expanded the campaign. PLEASE NOTE FOLKS, your state may also have the same legal power to ban aspartame, so you can learn from what Fox is doing and start your own campaign to make your state’s public servants do a proper job of protecting your food supply. In fact, when we interviewed Fox, he said he would be more than happy to help activists in other states and provinces in their battle to remove aspartame from the marketplace. We already know people who are going to take him up on his generous offer. You can reach Fox at stephen@santafefineart.com.
The 2006 campaign to get rid of aspartame is now expanding on two fronts. On the first front, another Nutrition Council bill has been introduced with the political support of Governor Bill Richardson, who has enthusiastically placed it on the agenda for the 2006 short session, which he controls, doubly endorsing it with an Executive Message.
The purpose of the bill is the same as the last one – to establish, by statute, a state agency called the Nutrition Council with the statutory power to challenge the FDA if it approves known carcinogens and neurotoxic food additives.
On the second front, there is a hearing, scheduled for July 2006, convened by the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) and the State’s Attorney General, a plan that was conceived after much public pressure from Fox and company. As you would expect, corporate lawyers from the makers of aspartame have threatened litigation to prevent the hearing from taking place, though, at the moment, Governor Richardson is standing firm that there needs to be a fair hearing.
One wonders on what grounds such a lawsuit would be based? Is it the need to prevent public servants from doing their job to protect the public? Or, more to the point, the need to protect Big Pharmaâ?Ts profits over the lives and health of innocent consumers?
So, as you can see, the well-funded, money making giants have so far managed their damage-control brilliantly and we are still being poisoned. Will this continue? Will you continue to suffer, see your friends and family suffer, see children who trust their parents and ordinary citizens who trust the FDA be harmed while most doctors, a useless FDA and some company stock holders sit back and profit?
Yes, it comes down to what ordinary citizens acting together are willing to do. Right now there is a problem you can help with. As Dean and Meininger put it:
There will be two meetings in the first weeks of January in Santa Fe, New Mexico that could dramatically alter future events, or, for that matter, put an end to what the ordinary citizens of New Mexico have expressly stated as their will. One meeting is with the Attorney General’s Office and the Environmental Improvement Board and the other with the Pharmacy Board. At those meetings we hope that the Attorney General’s Office makes a recommendation that the July hearing goes forward as planned. So, if we are to act, it must be now to make sure this happens.
Once the July hearing is secured, it’s up to the people to keep the heat on to make sure it will be fair and impartial and no funny stuff goes on behind closed doors among the power brokers. Since what happens in Santa Fe in July has national and international ramifications, it is up to all of us to lend a hand to those in New Mexico who have done a spectacular job bringing the aspartame scandal to public view.
So you are asked to spend a few minutes this week to send this information to all your friends and urge them to join you in contacting the capital of New Mexico with e-mail messages from all over in support of the ordinary people of New Mexico.
Please have these e-mail messages sent to:
Governor Bill Richardson c/o Chief of Staff Dave Contarino at: dave.contarino@state.nm.us
Please thank the Governor for putting Senate Bill 525 to create the Nutrition Council on the Call and giving it his Executive Message.
Please tell him you support states’ rights to regulate harmful products especially now when it is obvious the FDA has failed in its regulatory responsibilities on a number of drugs and other products such as aspartame.
Attorney General,
The Honorable Patricia Madrid
ewood@ago.state.nm.us
Deputy General, Stuart Bluestone
sbluestone@ago.state.nm.us
Please tell both Ms. Madrid and Mr. Bluestone that you support their desire to defend New Mexico’s right to challenge the safety of an FDA-approved product such as aspartame, particularly when it is so obvious it should never been approved at all.
Please, do it now. This is important to all of us.