- I had the pleasure of meeting with Senator
Gerald Ortiz y Pino who sponsored the New Mexico Senate aspartame bill.
No doubt the lobbyists with the morals of rapists preyed on his mind...and
today he wrote this letter:
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- Aspartame Buys Time
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- By Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino
- 2-19-6
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- Nothing surprises me anymore when it
comes to the corrosive influence of money on our public policy. I'm not
just talking about the shenanigans inside the beltway of our nation's capitol-that
Congress is for sale to the highest bidder has unfortunately become a practically
accepted tenet of the American belief system.
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- So accepted is it that the astounding
arrogance and venality being revealed by the current Tom Delay and Jack
Abramoff scandals in the District of Columbia scarcely produce raised eyebrows,
let alone outrage.
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- But I'm not just talking about that.
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- Nor am I talking only about the way that
moneyed interests are able to sway local government toward policies that
benefit those interests; hey, we apparently prefer a system in which local
elections go to the highest bidder and business-as-usual involves twisting
contractors' arms to secure campaign contributions.
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- Instead, today I'd like to zero-in on
the pressure applied to our third level of representative government, the
carryings-on that occur in the halls of State Government ... in all its
branches.
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- And from among at least a dozen recent,
painful examples of how big business manages to protect itself from such
wet-blanket considerations as the good of the public, I'd like to select
one as a representative: the continued approval of the reliance by processed
food and beverage manufacturers on the chemical aspartame.
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- As an artificial sweetener, one now being
added to some 6,000 products, it is difficult for most Americans to not
consume aspartame daily. Its safety (and clearing up any doubts about that
safety) would seem to be of critical importance to millions of us. But
any discussion of this topic has been postponed in New Mexico indefinitely-through
influence exerted by representatives hired by the Japanese manufacturer
of aspartame, the Ajinomoto Corporation.
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- Those well-connected hired hands managed,
in December, to frighten the State Environmental Improvement Board (EIB)
into backing off of the public hearings into aspartame's safety that they
had originally agreed to conduct this coming summer. They managed this
delay by challenging the authority of the State of New Mexico to review
anything already approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
and by threatening to sue the state if we tried to do so.
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- Then those same hired hands resurfaced
(augmented by the addition to their team roster of Butch Maki, a close
confidant of Gov. Bill Richardson) in time to quash all attempts to discuss
the matter during the just-concluded State Legislature.
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- There was one hearing on the subject
and it drew significant numbers of the industry lobbyists, all of whom
asserted the same party line: The substance is perfectly safe; the Federal
Government has looked at it carefully and who the heck is New Mexico, anyway,
to raise any questions about it?
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- The committee succumbed, and turned down
the measure to ban aspartame 7-2.
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- That half-hour hearing was the total
discussion of the matter this year in the public arena in New Mexico, unless
the EIB board changes its mind and decides to call Ajinomoto's bluff by
going ahead and holding a hearing.
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- The incredible spectacle of corporate
hirelings exerting this kind of influence is, to our great shame, all too
common in our state. The Legislature has resisted reforming campaign finance
laws to inject some real muscle, which leaves the door wide open to the
corporate powers to throw money around strategically, buying whatever access
they need or blocking their opposition's access to the policymakers.
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- But no one should be surprised that Ajinomoto
would rely on muscle to protect its profits from aspartame. The entire
history of this product's approval by the FDA is rife with muscle flexing
... and very little in the way of science. Originally, it was a patent
of the Searle Pharmaceutical Company. And beginning in the late '60s, the
FDA repeatedly turned down Searle's submissions for approval, the results
of its testings leaving serious doubts in the minds of FDA scientists.
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- All of that changed in 1981 when Ronald
Reagan took the presidency. He listened to the then head of Searle, Donald
Rumsfeld, (yes, that Donald Rumsfeld) who bypassed the scientists and went
straight to the new Reagan appointee at FDA. Within weeks, the scientists
were overruled and aspartame was approved. Several FDA scientists resigned
in protest. They even alleged that Searle had fabricated results in the
testing submitted.
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- Twenty-five years later, the evidence
is mounting that our growing incidence of brain tumors, organ cancers and
neurological diseases has followed the introduction of so many artificially
created additives and chemicals in our food. It's only a matter of time
until even Ajinomoto's money won't be able to block the unavoidable link
between these unnecessary products and our decline in health.
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- When that happens, as it finally did
to tobacco and lead and other heavy metals found in gasoline, we will act.
The sad thing is that thousands of deaths and ruined lives will occur between
now and then.
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- One of the cruel ironies to aspartame
is that it was supposed to create sugar-free soft drinks for the benefit
of diabetics. Since its introduction, the incidence of diabetes has soared.
Some critics link the two. What is clear is that it ain't helping.
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- With all that money and muscle behind
it, aspartame has evaded its comeuppance for another year. But the final
reckoning can only be postponed, not avoided.
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- End of the Senator's letter
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- Last month there was still another study:
http://www.wnho.net/new_greek_aspartame_studies.htm Bottom line: Alzheimers
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- We are now taking aspartame brain tumor
cases in New York and New Jersey for litigation, three year statute of
limitations.
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- When I think of the Calorie Control Council
sending out press releases trying to prevent the public from believing
these studies, as they have done since the New York Times article, I think
of the millions of babies murdered in their mother's womb as the CCC pushes
this toxin on pregnant women. May they receive within themselves the recompense
for their error, and may Jehovah God see to it, and add to it.
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- Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
- Mission Possible International
- 9270 River Club Parkway
- Duluth, Georgia 30097
- 770 242-2599
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- Doctors mentioned in this post can be
seen in the documentary Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. They are the heros
of the anti-aspartame movement, continually publishing to rid the planet
of this poison.
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- More information on aspartame on www.wnho.net
and www.dorway.com (In memory of David Oliver Rietz who lost his life to
aspartame)
- Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
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