- New Mexico Pharmacy Board Considers Ban Again On January
9-10
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- Environmental Improvement Board grants 5 day Aspartame/Neurotoxicity
Hearings in July 2006
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- It was a "draw at the Pharmacy Board meeting November
14 in Albuquerque; this the only board which has the express statutory
power to implement such a ban in medications and vaccines. The co-petitioners
include myself and Santa Fe Pediatrician, Kenneth Stoller; Dr. Stoller
asked the Board to issue an immediate advisory to prevent pregnant women
and children under 50 pounds from getting flu shots that contain Thimerosal/Mercury,
and he spoke at length on the mountain of incontrovertible evidence and
the obvious link between Thimerosal/Mercury and Autism in children. We
had already presented a petition to the Board for a rule change and addition
to the New Mexico Administrative Code, a new chapter prohibiting neurotoxins
in medications and vaccines, which can be found in full at www.wnho.net,
under Aspartame.
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- However, progress toward the Pharmacy Board's consideration
of such a quantum leap in consumer protection was hamstrung, due to the
complete surprise of an "unexpected guest, a Harvard lawyer and corporate
legislative lobbyists, representing the world's largest aspartame and Monosodium
Glutamate manufacturer, the Japanese mega-corporation, Ajinomoto. The Ajinomoto
lawyer wasn't on the agenda; he was representing the most corporate oriented
firm in New Mexico. In essence, he told the Board of Pharmacy:
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- "You don't have the power to challenge an FDA approved
product. Besides, why worry? Aspartame is totally safe, and besides that,
you don't have the expertise to make such a judgment, and another besides:
you would have to hire ten or twenty people just to red through the millions,
maybe tens of millions, of pages at the FDA, which prove that it is safe!
The petitioners should be making their complaint, if it were really valid
and not frivolous, directly to the FDA, probably because they think you
are easier to push around!
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- He promised that there will be litigation to prevent
the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board, a different board considering
banning aspartame in food, not pharmaceutical products, from having its
5 day hearing next July, and hinted that this would also happen to the
Board of Pharmacy, if they scheduled a similar hearing. [Why not? His new
client, Ajinomoto, has very deep pockets, and he can thereby run up a humongous
bill!]
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- I pointed out to the Board that he was essentially bludgeoning
them into acquiescence, and that the legislature had long ago given them
extensive regulatory powers over medications, as well as the power to promulgate
rules if a product were determined to be injurious, dangerous, adulterated,
or mislabeled. The legislature also wanted them to move forward, which
they must do, and not come back to the Legislature to ask them to do the
banning.
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- The Board demurred. Their counsel and Asst. Attorney
General assigned to them, Kathyleen Kunkel, told them that they did have
the power, that she hadn't talked with Attorney General Madrid herself,
and that she would do so soon.
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- In my unplanned rebuttal, I hammered the point that the
flawed FDA approval processes were already besieged in numerous court decisions,
particularly those involving Vioxx/Merck in Texas, Zoloft/Pfizer in Minnesota,
and Thimerosal in Louisiana.
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- The Vioxx case is very well known: the Mark Lanier Firm
of Houston successfully won a judgment of abut $250 million for the widow
of a fellow who died from Vioxx, which will be scaled back in accordance
with Texas Law.
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- Zoloft/Pfizer case in Minnesota is notable in that Pfizer
asked Chief Federal Judge James Rosenbaum for a summary dismissal of no
product liability because of FDA never required a suicidality warning on
their boxes of Zoloft; in March 2005, Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch
filed an amicus brief to the effect that an FDA approval did not preempt
Minnesota's product liability tort laws, and that the FDA's enabling statute
back in 1937 never intended to, expressedly or impliedly, preempt state
laws. Judge Rosenbaum agreed in July, 2005.
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- The Thimerosal case, Moss vs. Merck resulted in a decision
by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals holding that the National Childhood
Vaccine Injury Act did not prevent parents whose child developed autism
form thimerosal-laden vaccines from suing the Thimerosal manufacturer.
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- I mentioned to the Board of Pharmacy that I had recently
spoken in Santa Fe with the Attorney General of New York Eliot Spitzer
about our efforts, and the first thing he replied with was this: "THE
FDA IS A JOKE!"
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- I went on to say that the FDA's approval of Aspartame
meant nothing; to call it a meaningful or viable preemption was absurd,
especially given the mountain of neurodegenerative problems piling up as
evidence since approval in 1981 and 1983 for soft drinks, and since Senator
Howard Metzenbaum's bill to require labeling for aspartame was killed in
committee in 1985.
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- The newest Pharmacy Board member, Allen Carrier of Santa
Fe, former Congressional Affairs Secretary for Norman Mineta, Secretary
of Transportation for Clinton recalled his recollection that Bill Clinton
removed aspartame from the FDA's "closely watched list in the late
1990's, and that Senator Kennedy ostensibly supported that Clinton decision!
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- [My efforts since the hearing to confirm or deny such
a recollection by queries to the FDA and to Senator Kennedy's office have
resulted nothing thus far].
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- At the hearing, I did, however, refer Mr.Carrier back
to comments made by Senator Kennedy about thirty years ago, before the
FDA approval of aspartame, about how the original data G.D. Searle submitted
to obtain aspartame's approval was rigged, sloppy, and phony; I reminded
the Board of who Arthur Hull Hayes was, the FDA Commissioner who approved
the sweetener, where he came from, and how he had to resign from his FDA
position in disgrace. I reminded them of who President of G.D. Searle was
at that time, who had so much to gain by forcing aspartame's approval through
the FDA. I even conceded that both of New Mexico's U.S. Senators who are
still in office, back in 1985 voted against Metzenbaum's labeling bill,
but that medical evidence of aspartame's neurodegenerative effects had
accrued since 1981, and that they wouldn't do so today.
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- I hope that I did a fiery and memorable job impugning
the FDA approval process in the minds of the Pharmacy Board members, especially
since aspartame turns to formaldehyde and is in hundreds of children's
medications,vitamins, and aspirins that pharmacies all over America regularly
sell, both by prescription and over the counter.
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- The Board discussed waiting till the EIB ruled, and then
finally decided to hang everything on the New Mexico Attorney General's
opinion. The Vice Chair, Amy Buesing, R.Ph., who represents the Hospital
Industry on the Board, made a motion to table, depending on the attorney
general's opinion as to whether they as a board have the statutory power
to challenge an FDA approved product.
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- Her motion was seconded simultaneously by Howard Shaver
from Albuquerque [who was drinking a diet Coke], and by the Mayor of Milan,
Tom Ortega, R.Ph. Ortega. Ortega said we should have more faith in the
FDA, that he had learned as Mayor to work with federal authorities, and
that we didn't want to cause children to not get their vaccinations and
stop taking their vitamins, and that that lack of water in Grants, New
Mexico, was far more serious than neurotoxins like aspartame, or so he
concluded.
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- New Mexico's Attorney General is Patricia Madrid, and
she is running for Congress from the Albuquerque District against Republican
incumbent, Heather Wilson. Her deputy is Stuart Bluestone.
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- Letters to both of them should come from all over the
world, especially from victims, physicians, and lawyers, which address
these questions and help her and Stuart see the merits of protecting New
Mexicans, health by standing up to an FDA approved product which has caused
so much harm and will continue to cause such harm, all the while the Pharmacy
Board is waiting: waiting for the Attorney General's opinion and waiting
for the Environmental Improvement Board, whose hearing is not until next
July.
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- [In retrospect, I should have made a rough calculation
of how many trillion brain cells in New Mexico's 400,000 children would
be destroyed by aspartame before July 2006, while they waited, and that
if Agent Orange were discovered in their children's, toothpaste or lead
in their Pedialyte or Children's Tylenol, would they really think it necessary
to wait 7 months to see what some other Board might do?
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- I did mention that Governor Bill Richardson and U.S.
Senator Jeff Bingaman would like to write to them in the very near future
to encourage their deliberations on aspartame, and the Pharmacy Board Chairman,
Woodrow Storey, R.Ph., welcomed that idea warmly. He also said he would
be glad to be on a subcommittee of three from the Board or even a new Governor's
Task Force.
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- Also, Buffie Saavedra, daughter of the NM House Appropriations
Committee Chairman Henry "Kiki Saavedra, and Rudy Nolasco, R.Ph.,
a pharmacist from Las Vegas New Mexico who complained that flu vaccines
without mercury cost him an extra $10 in a recent flu clinic at his pharmacy,
both said very encouraging things about our petition.
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- The Board's Secretary, Danny Cross, R.Ph., of Carlsbad
New Mexico, was silent during the proceedings, which lasted about 90 minutes.
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- The Vice Chair's motion to table until the A.G. responds
to confirm their statutory powers passed unanimously, 9-0. The Chairman
said he wanted to be sure that they advanced completely sure of their legal
powers. I concluded my comments by saying that that was what I wanted too!
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- My Co-petitioner and expert on Mercury as a cause of
Autism in children, Dr. Ken Stoller, was on ABC T.V. on the evening news,
and we were both on a Spanish language station, with my remarks entirely
in Spanish. There were no newspaper reporters present that I could see.
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- That is what happened, and I make clear that aspartame
opponents should write to Attorney General Madrid and to Governor Bill
Richardson soon. Please send letters to:
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- The Honorable Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico
4th Floor, The Capitol,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
87501
Attention Chief of Staff, David Contarino
[505] 827- 3000
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- To:
- The Honorable Patricia Madrid, Attorney General of New
Mexico
- The Bataan Building,
- Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 [
505] 827-6000
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- And to:
- The Honorable Stuart Bluestone,
- Deputy Attorney General of New Mexico
- The Bataan Building,
- Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
- [505] 827-6004
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- Please ask for a reply, and please ask your friends,
colleagues, and family to also write these 3 letters. I certainly don't
intend for this issue to die a slow bureaucratic death. Remember, this
was the first presentation to the Pharmacy Board, and I think speaking
in an evidentiary sense, we are in a much stronger position after the first
presentation than we were after the first presentation to the Environmental
Improvement Board back in June.
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- We certainly have identified the enemy: Ajinomoto, a
gigantic Japanese conglomerate, which is the world's largest manufacturer
of neurotoxic additives to food and medicine, the world's largest for aspartame
and for Monosodium Glutamate as well.
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- The end users of these products like Coca Cola, Dannon
Yogurt, Wrigley's Gum, and others, should be worried as well, and perhaps
some new corporations in the Aspartame pantheon like the pharmaceuticals
which use them should be worried, and should recognize the danger we pose
to them, now that we are on their very self-serving "radar screen.
After all, product liability suits for aspartame damages could run into
the hundreds of billions of dollars, when the Attorneys General of the
states recognize that there is no real difference between Big Aspartame
and Big Tobacco. These many corporations may hire excellent lawyers, but
the medical evidence is so strong against them.
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- I have faith that the people of New Mexico and their
concern for health will in the long run triumph over these "corporate
lackey boilerplate lawyers from the firm of Hired Guns and Hacks,"
even those who went to Harvard Law School, who try to substitute meaningful
efforts of any state to protect its citizens' health with legal measures
to keep happy their neurotoxic corporate clients, especially by saying
that the completely flawed FDA approval of their neurodegenerative products
somehow preempts any real concerns by New Mexico parents for their children's
health.
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- I am happy to finally report that on November 14, the
same day of the Pharmacy Board meeting, New Mexico's Honorable Governor
Bill Richardson in Santa Fe announced his Healthy Kids initiative, one
goal of which is that New Mexico will create the highest standards for
children's nutrition in the nation! Bill Richardson is for real, and so
is this effort to rid New Mexico of Aspartame and Thimerosal.
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- I look forward as always to your insights and very brightest
ideas about to kick the aspartame monster corporations and the rest of
the neurotoxin purveyors out of New Mexico entirely, once and for all time.
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- STEPHEN FOX
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- stephen@santafefineart.com
- 217 W. Water,
- Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
505 983-2002
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