From the April 2007 Idaho Observer:

Aspartame and the NM legislature: Business as usual

New Mexico is truly the Land of Enchantment. In February I saw a spell cast over the state legislature that killed a bill to ban a poison and protect the lives and health of every New Mexican. A veritable phalanx of corporate agents crawled over Santa Fe in the New Mexico Roundhouse like a seething swarm of maggots to defeat the Honorable State Senator Ortiz y Pino’s bill to outlaw aspartame from the state. The poison is sold as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Canderel, E951 and other aliases, and it interacts with all drugs and vaccines. 92% of all independent scientific peer reviewed studies show the problems that aspartame causes. See www.dorway.com/peerrev.html

Stephen Fox of Mission Possible New Mexico is one of the volunteers and has spent more than two years informing legislators of the seriousness of this neurodegenerative plague. Fox supplied documents by many recognized MDs and medical authorities to each senator.

Through the generosity of Sound and Fury Productions of Tucson, Arizona, copies of the documentary, "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World," had been distributed to lawmakers.

DIRTY TRICK! An unregistered lobbyist said he represented "The Coalition for Freedom of Choice in Sugar Substitutes." The "Coalition" seems to have sprung up overnight, spawned and funded by the industry front group, Calorie Control Council. Fox commented, " The head of the so called "Coalition" is Albuquerque Endocrinologist Dr. Gleeson who wrote the legislators in advance of the hearings in the Senate and in the House to convince them aspartame was urgently needed for diabetics!"

TRUTH: Aspartame can precipitate diabetes. It simulates and aggravates diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, destroys the optic nerve and makes diabetics go into convulsions. It even interacts with insulin. Immediately Dr. H. J. Roberts, Florida endocrinologist and world expert on aspartame, and Dr. Kenneth Stoller, Santa Fe pediatrician and renowned authority on autism’s causes, fired off letters challenging and correcting Gleeson’s ploy to poison diabetics…

Dr. Armando Gutierrez, the unregistered lobbyist who represented "The Coalition" spewed off a list of government agencies, individuals and professional organizations that agree aspartame is safe including those in other countries.

FACT: Originally, FDA asked the Department of Justice to prosecute the G. D. Searle Co. for submitting fraudulent test data. Both U.S. prosecutors joined the defense law firms after dawdling until the statute of limitations expired. FDA revoked the petition for approval but Don Rumsfeld, CEO of Searle, called in his markers and got it on the market.

Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, FDA toxicologist, told Congress in 1987 the original studies were built on a foundation of sand and should have been thrown out, and aspartame never was proven safe. This was 6 years after aspartame had been marketed for human consumption!

Vice President of Coke, New Mexico, Antonio Anaya, said in the Senate hearing that "listening to these aspartame opponents made me feel like I was on the movie set of ‘Twilight Zone.’"

Unfortunately, not one Coca Cola executive has ever apologized nor tried to mitigate the conclusive research done by the Ramazzini Foundation proving the cancer causing properties of Coca Cola. See: www.ramazzini.it/fondazione/docs/NYAS_Coca-Cola_Ramazzini.pdf

With the legislators who were to decide the issue sipping Diet Coke during the hearing, it was self-evident they would vote for their addiction, not citizens. No facts, expert witnesses, medical documentation or Federal records could move them. The grim irony is: they will, in due course, forfeit their health and shorten their lives by permitting "Rumsfeld’s Disease" to rage on unchecked.   

(See: www.thenhf.com/articles_408.htm)
 

Last year many received copies of the Ecologist with the entire history of this hideous world epidemic. This article alone should have produced a reaction of rage and indignation at the misrepresentations by Ajinomoto and Coca Cola lobbyists and those from the Calorie Control Council and their funded Coalition for Sugar Substitute Choices. See:www.wnho.net
Dr. Kenneth Stoller, Santa Fe, licensed in Pediatric Medicine and Hyperbaric Medicine and world expert on Thimersol & Autism, began by saying, "I know we don’t have a chance with you drinking Diet Coke, but at least consider the children." He said a 50 lb Little Leaguer drinking ¾ of a 2 liter bottle of diet pop gets ten times the allowable EPA exposure to methanol." Dr. Stoller operates an Aspartame Detox Center.

Santa Fe Neurotoxicologist Dr. Raymond Singer testified, declaring, "Aspartame is a toxic substance added to our food supply, which alters brain function.  It has no nutritional value to offset its toxicity.  The brain has no pain receptors, so subclinical damage, such as may occur with aspartame, and is unnoticed, but cumulative and persistent." 

A great disappointment was Senator Steve Komadina, (Republican-Corrales), a medical doctor who warns his pregnant OB-GYN patients off aspartame to avoid damage to their unborn bsabies. With full knowledge of aspartame toxicity, Dr. Komadina made the motion to kill the bill, which was seconded by Senator Gay Kernan, Republican of Hobbs.

The week before I had sent Komadina a 50-page display book full of evidence against aspartame.  When I saw him before the Senate committee meeting I asked if it had been received.  I was shocked at his bizarre reply:  "I don’t read emails, I get more than 4000 a day sometimes." 

I repeated: "Senator, it was sent Federal Express." 

His reply? "I don’t always read my mail."  The third time he said: "Okay, I did receive it." 

It was obvious he didn’t want anyone to know he had the knowledge because he was going to kill the bill, and I made that comment to him.

Public Affairs Committee Vice-chairman Senator Mary Jane Garcia is diabetic. I was so concerned about her using aspartame I sent a packet of medical reports to her regarding its adverse effects on diabetics. I was trying to save her life and was particularly pleased when I heard before the committee meeting that she would vote for the bill. However, immediately before the committee meeting she was talking to the lobbyist for the New Mexico Soft Drink Association who thanked her very much. Minutes later she told Stephen Fox she wouldn’t vote for the bill because she had heard from people in her "industry," the bar business, that it was a bad bill.

I was in New Mexico at the request of Senator Ortiz y Pino, testifying as an expert witness for the Senate and House of Representatives. I explained FDA approvals do not preempt States Rights to reject additives to protect consumers. James Turner fought original aspartame approval along with Dr. John Olney. I presented the protest of the National Soft Drink Association (now American Beverage) from the Congressional Record. Among their many objections was that aspartame decomposes and adulteration violates the law. It also violates the Delaney Amendment that prohibits putting anything in food that caused cancer in animals.  Dr. Adrian Gross, FDA toxicologist, testified 8/1/85 to Congress in this regard. I read the summary of the FDA Board of Inquiry report that revoked the petition for approval of aspartame because it failed to prove safety and caused brain tumors.

I further testified that the Bill of Rights forbids taking away the rights of the people or of the States. I held up the 1038 page medical text, "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic," by H. J. Roberts showing "Rumsfeld’s" disease is a raging plague.

Senator Komadina asked that the bill be tabled because of Interstate Commerce issues. I explained you couldn’t legally ship an illegal adulterated product in the first place, a priori, so aspartame violates Interstate Commerce laws.  Senator Ortiz y Pino explained that his bill would forbid only selling it in New Mexico; thus, there was no problem with trucking it through the state.

Komadina nevertheless moved to table the bill which was then seconded by Senator Gay Kernan from Hobbs, who is married to a physician who tries to persuade her to give up Diet Coke.

Komadina also brought up "derivatives," (components) asking how they could ALL be banned.  He’s a smart man.  Instead of tabling the bill, he could have just added an amendment, "Aspartame as patented." 

"The Coalition for Freedom of Choice in Sugar Substitutes" emerged in the hearing by Public Affairs! The committee voted 6-2 to table the bill.

www.wnho.net and www.dorway.com

Note: Martini’s full report details lobbyist lies about aspartame toxicity and counters them with documented evidence. Her report was excerpted to provide a window into the American legislative process: A majority of Senators and representatives who know better are willing to compromise public health and safety for political reasons. ~DWH