- To the Honorable Rep Josh Green, MD, Chairman, House
Health Committee Rep John Mizuno, Vice Chairman and Members of the
Committee:
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- Dear Rep Green and Committee Members:
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- Thank you for including Mission Possible International
as a member of your work group, and thank you for taking the time
to read this formal testimony. We are filing this at the very last minute,
since you and no one from your office or any of the committee members responded
to our voluminous medical and victim testimony to inform any of us of your
Resolution. We are sure that the lobbyists from the Grocers and Soft Drink
Companies who opposed the bills for an outright ban are aware of this Resolution
of yours, as that is their job after all, to apprise their employers of
anything and everything which might even potentially down the road challenge
the viability and safety of their products. They are probably happy to
begrudgingly chime in their concurrence, although at this date, there is
no testimony presented on the Hawaii Legislature website.
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- We recommend that you - in either a committee amendment
or in a floor amendment - include two victims of aspartame poisoning, not
just consumers, as you originally put it, and that you add a representative
of the Hawaii Attorney Generals Consumer Protection Division, since aspartame
will someday soon be the subject of massive compensatory and punitive lawsuits
similar to the states tobacco suits in the 1990's; you might as well get
someone on board who is capable of comprehending the evidentiary aspects
of the epidemiological scale inherent in aspartame poisoning, the whistle
blowers from the manufacturers, etc.
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- You apparently are trying to be conciliatory and trying
to mean well, although the tone of some of the Resolution is angry and
critical of victims point of view by impugning and ridiculing the opposition
to aspartame as a kind of junk Internet science.
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- We are also astonished by your inclusion of the Calorie
Control Council, whose entire purpose is to please their corporate fenders,
which include aspartame manufacturers and users, like Coca Cola, Ajinomoto,
and the Merisant Corporation, maker of Equal. They are at best apologists
and soothsayers, through and through; that is their job. Putting them on
a Task Force, however well intended are your intentions, is similar to
asking a few members of the Nazi High Command to serve as judges at Nuremberg!
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- Deriding our point of view as junk science is absurd,
in view of the fact that the Director of Health, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, and
her Department, in order to oppose outright ban bills, chose to use a so-called
study [AKA the Burdock Report] from Toxicology Journal which was entirely
paid for by Ajinomoto of Japan, the worlds largest manufacturer of both
aspartame and of another neurotoxic additive: Monosodium Glutamate, and
purposefully excluded almost all of the independent studies which showed
their obvious neurodegenerative harm from aspartame and its metabolic by
products, like methanol, formaldehyde, and diketopiperazine.
-
- Another point on Calorie Control Council which you and
your House colleagues should be aware of: these folks continually espouse
the use of their products, even for pregnant women, phenylketoneurics,
and liver patients. Their cheerleading positions occasionally erupt onto
the pages of major American newspapers, like the Miami Herald, to whom
Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D. wrote the following, and we quote his
entire letter for exactitude of testimony:
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- Posted: 24 Apr 2004 Miami Herald article from 02 February
2004 "Dear Editor,
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- "It has come to my attention that the Calorie Control
Council, a front group for the NutraSweet Company, recently suggested that
aspartame was safe for women to use during pregnancy, as well as by those
with serious liver disease and phenylketonurics. [Emphasis added:] This
is the most serious breech of public trust in the history of this nation.
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- "There is not one long-term study of aspartame safety
ever conducted on the offspring of pregnant women consuming aspartame.
Yet, there are numerous studies indicating aspartame could pose a serious
danger to both mother and infant. For example, according to the National
Collaborative Study for Maternal PKU, blood levels of phenylalanine, a
major component of aspartame and a developmental brain toxin, should not
exceed 6mg./dl. In a study of pregnant women it was found that aspartame
consumption at commonly consumed amounts reached these levels in 42% of
normal women and 100% of PKU carriers. One in fifty people are PKU carriers
and do not know it.
-
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- This same group concluded that levels of 10mg/dl held
a serious risk of infant brain impairment. In this same study 15% of pregnant
women reached this toxic level of phenylalanine and 36% of PKU carriers.
This means that fully a third of all babies born to PKU carrier mothers
consuming aspartame foods and drinks risk-varying degrees of brain damage.
It is also known that the amount of toxic phenylalanine reaching the baby
is twice as high as that in the mother's blood because the placenta concentrates
the toxin. In addition, numerous metabolic breakdown products of aspartame
are known to damage the developing infant's brain, including methanol,
formaldehyde, formic acid, diketopiperizine and phenylacetate.
-
- "Aspartame has been shown by several studies to
damage DNA, which can lead to cancer and degenerative brain disorders later
in life. The risk of increased brain tumors in such a child would be enormous.
Similar mechanisms of damage would be expected in those with liver disease.
Studies on aspartame safety have shown that the product increases tumors
throughout numerous organs, especially the brain. It was shown that brain
tumor incidence increased over 47X in animals exposed to aspartame.
-
- "With the public concern over childhood obesity
and diabetes, few are being told of the overwhelming evidence that early
exposure to excitotoxins (as found in aspartame) consistently produce gross
obesity and insulin resistant diabetes, just as we are seeing in our youth.
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- "The promoters of aspartame use have been lying
from the beginning and continue to use their money and political clout
to cover up the real and present dangers of this toxic product."
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- Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. Neurosurgeon Ridgeland, MS
39157 Author of Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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- As to Dr. Fukinos espousal of the Ajinomoto study, we
are indeed patient, ready and willing to educate her, if that is acceptable
to you and to her as to the egregious flaws in that so-called Burdock Report,
and if this is even possible with the presence of the Calorie Control Council
in your Resolution. Because the gullible Dr. Fukino didn't have the ability
nor take the time to research based on facts easily found in the public
record, Mark Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Center, did it for her. Here
is the rebuttal to this atrocity to stumble the public, which we ask be
included in the official testimony on this Resolution of yours: .
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- http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/burdock/%3
- Ehttp://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/burdock/
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- Any physician should have known better than to use one
of the manufacturers defense reviews. Much of their flawed research has
already been exposed.
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- Next, in the proposed work group, you have included the
American Beverage Association, the present successor to the National Soft
Drink Assn. They wrote a 30 page protest in l983 stating Searle had not
met its burdens under section 409 to demonstrate that aspartame is functional
for use in soft drinks. They spoke about the extensive deficiencies,
enough to render those studies inadequate and unreliable. They stated the
company did not demonstrate the use of aspartame in soft drinks would not
result in the adulteration of the beverages. The protest was so vehement
that when NSDA turned around and lobbied for NutraSweet, their protest
was added to the congressional record of May, l985, so the world would
know they were adding this toxin with full knowledge of the studies that
did not prove it safe. Are you expecting they are going to say they are
sorry and want to turn around and help the people now?
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- We are however, willing and prepared to further educate
them as to the point of view implicit in their vehement objections in 1983,
the details of which are included in a forthcoming more effective Senate
Resolution, which you may read shortly when it has been formally introduced.
-
- Do you really believe front groups who are paid and those
who sell the product will not defend their product? Are we to believe that
the plan in your Resolution is a serious and unbiased program to help Hawaiians?
Why not just invite the CEOs of Ajinomoto, Monsanto and Merisant and let
them have a reunion on the House Floor, and pass out diet sodas for everyone
to drink?
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- Dr. Green, in your possession you have Dr. H. J. Roberts
medical text of over 1000 pages of the horrors this poison causes from
cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, seizures and sudden death, to embalming
of living tissue and interaction of drugs, written by a physician with
over two decades experience treating diabetics who are victims of aspartame
poisoning, as well as those diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, whose symptoms
subside once they stop consuming Aspartame. Selected by his medical peers
in 1984 as the best doctor in the US, Roberts has taken care of aspartame
victims in the trenches of medical practice and has testified before Congress.
You're a physician. Have you forgotten First do no harm? Why would you
invite the corporate hacks and front groups who poisoned the people to
work a program to genuinely protect them?
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- We are somewhat appalled at your resolution, although
under the circumstances, with less that 30 hours before the first testimony
may be heard, and rushing to complete this letter before 24 hours before
the hearing, we have to rise in support of the Resolution, with a few changes,
like adding 2 victims instead of consumers chosen by the Director of the
Health Department.
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- You had full knowledge because you are the only member
of the entire legislature with Dr. Roberts medical text, and were even
given a documentary where the attorney himself who tried to stop approval
explains how it was marketed by the political chicanery and regulatory
coup by Don Rumsfeld after the FDA revoked the petition for approval and
said it could not be proven safe. Why do you think the FDA wanted the company
indicted? Because they kept trying to prove a poison safe, and couldn't
do it; they kept getting caught.
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- In saying in the Resolution that the people of Hawaii
have a choice to consume or not consume aspartame, thus giving a kind of
carte blanche to any corporation manufacturing anything, as they do in
most 3rd world nations which have no regulatory apparatuses set up to protect
them: this is technically true; however, most Hawaiians, like most Americans,
really don't read labels, as they have been assured hundreds of times that
the United States Food and Drug Administration would never approve a poison,
and most naively believe that the FDA is there to protect them. Further,
we are sure that 90% of them don't know what a phenylketoneuric even is.
-
- Corporations and their front groups loudly proclaimed
the safety of their products like Asbestos, Leaded Gasoline, Thalidomide,
DDT, Vioxx, etc., until the body count and the lawsuit piled up so badly
that their lies were completely transparent. Wouldn't your point of view
there obviate the entire purpose of committees like yours and the House
Committee for Consumer Protection and Commerce?
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- We are trying to protect the people of Hawaii from a
poison, not defend front groups lobbyists and manufacturers. There is not
a person who has read this resolution who has not seen through it, and
not liked what they saw. You can read a medical text; you know the score.
-
- First, under obvious and regrettable pressure from Grocery
Manufacturers and Soft Drink bottlers, you defer the bill when it could
have been moved to the next committee, and now you bring in those we've
been exposing for years. How will you explain this to your constituents,
in the event that they ask you? This whole resolution is outrageous. It's
like asking baby killers to decorate the nursery. They will spend all their
time convincing you and the committee this poison is safe as rain, and
then you can walk away and say "we tried".
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- Thank you and the Committee Members for reading this
long testimony prepared on very short notice.
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- Respectfully, and cosigned by:
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- Stephen Fox, Managing Editor Santa Fe Sun News stephen@santafefineart.com
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- Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway Duluth, Georgia 30097 770 242-2599
- http://www.mpwhi.com/ http://www.dorway.com Aspartame
Toxicity Center,
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- http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
-
-
- bettym19@mindspring.com
- ___________________________________________
-
- HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES H.C.R. NO. 132 , TWENTY-FOURTH
LEGISLATURE, 2008
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- STATE OF HAWAII - HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Requesting
the Director of Health to form a work group to explore the need to ban
or better label products containing the artificial sweetener aspartame.
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- WHEREAS, discovered in 1965, aspartame was first approved
in the United States in 1981 and is one of the most widely used artificial
sweeteners; and
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- WHEREAS, when metabolized by the body, aspartame is broken
down into two common amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, and
a small amount of a third substance, methanol; and
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- WHEREAS, these three substances occur in similar or greater
amounts in common foods; and
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- WHEREAS, aspartame continues to be the subject of strong
public controversy regarding its safety; and
-
- WHEREAS, some studies have recommended further investigation
into the possible connection between aspartame and diseases such as brain
tumors, brain lesions, and lymphoma; and
-
- WHEREAS, some human and animal studies have found adverse
effects and some have found no adverse effects; and
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- WHEREAS, while there have been a number of studies on
the effects of aspartame on people, there is a great deal of argument by
both proponents and opponents on the methods used in the testing and whether
accurate representations of the consequences of average consumption by
people have been achieved by these studies; and WHEREAS, the Internet has
become a tool for many to spread and promote the opinion they adhere to
as fact whether it is that aspartame is a neurotoxin derived from toxic
sludge or it is a harmless product enabling a healthy lifestyle; and
-
- WHEREAS, while many may find that the simple answer to
the problem is to not purchase or use any product containing aspartame
in it, there are those who maintain that some products do not specifically
list aspartame as an ingredient, rather it is hidden under the label of
"natural flavors"; now, therefore,
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- BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the
Twenty-fourth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2008,
the Senate concurring, that the Director of Health is requested to form
a work group to explore the need to ban or improve labeling for products
containing the artificial sweetener aspartame; and
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- BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED the members of the work group
should include:
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- (1) One member from the House of Representatives appointed
by the Speaker of the House of Representatives;
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- (2) One member of the Senate appointed by the President
of the Senate;
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- (3) The Director of Health or the director's designee;
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- (4) The President of the Calorie Control Council or the
President's designee; and
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- (5) The President and Chief Executive Officer of the
American Beverage Association or a designee;
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- (6) The President of the Hawaii Society of Naturopathic
Physicians or a designee;
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- (7) The Founder of Mission Possible International or
a designee; and
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- (8) Two consumers appointed by the Director of Health;
and
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- BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED the work group is requested to
submit a report of its findings, as well as any suggested legislation,
to the Legislature no later than 20 days prior to the convening of the
Regular Session of 2010; and
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- BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this
Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Director of Health, President
of the Calorie Control Council, President and Chief Executive Officer
of the American Beverage Association, President of the Hawaii Society of
Naturopathic Physicians, and Founder of Mission Possible International.
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