Corporate influence on Hawaii consumer protection bills to ban Aspartame: please help by immediately calling Democrat Senator David Ige, Chairman Health Committee, 808-586-6230; fax 808-586-6231 E-mail sendige@Capitol.hawaii.gov; ask him to schedule Sen. Kalani English's SB2506; if this fails and bill dies, most malevolent corporations in the world win again! FDA approval forced by Donald Rumsfeld in 1981 as CEO of Searle.

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....with notes generously provided by Dr. Betty Martini, Founder, Mission Possible International 

Dr. Chiyome Leinaala Fukino, Director of Hawaii Department of Health, in her ostensibly expert testimony posted at the Hawaii Legislature website under Testimony opposing HB 2680 to ban aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine referred to a study used to oppose the bill which was paid for by the world’s largest manufacturer of aspartame and of another neurotoxic additive (Monosodium Glutamate); that company is Ajinomoto, the manufacturer of aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine funded it, and it used industry studies to say aspartame is safe.  (Strangely enough, even after repeated phone calls, almost none of the medical experts supporting the ban who submitted testimony have yet seen their testimony posted on the legislature website, and please do take a look at the Forbes magazine puff piece on Ajinomoto’s Chief Scientific Officer, a Japanese Veterinarian, who thinks MSG is not neurotoxic but actually good enough medicine to give to starving children in Ghana: this is a Googleable article: The MSG Cure).

Is there a reason that she, a physician, Director, Department of Health didn't check this out? Maybe you the reader should call her and ask her that question….  The medical experts in the US don’t think it so amusing that Ajinomoto tried to get away with this phony paper.

Thus, any Legislature Resolution that is watered down and weakened asking the DOH to “study” this more and report back to the legislature is pretty toothless, as in my opinion the DOH has already disqualified itself from even any illusion of objectivity! The Hawaii Department of Health should be more dedicated to protecting  the health of all Hawaiians, and their study, unless it includes a repository where victims of aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine poisoning can report their cases, and to include those reported by the families of those who have already died; unless a Resolution addressed these needs, such a Resolution would all be for nothing.  A meaningful resolution should also include a direct request of Andrew Von Eschenbach, M.D., Commissioner of the FDA, to immediately rescind the approval for aspartame, but keep in mind that 21 New Mexico Legislators have already signed a letter to him and to President Bush to that effect over one year ago; this letter was virtually ignored by Dr. Von Eschenbach, who replied with corporate pleasantries that looked like they had been taken off the manufacturer’s website, and completely ignored by George Bush, who continues to drink Diet Sodas, despite warnings not to do so by physicians.

    

The Hawaii DOH is (inadvertently we hope) defending industry.  Physicians wanting credible studies would do some further research. I truly understand how busy are the legislators, but one has to wonder whether Josh Green or any of the Committee members even read the detailed testimonies from some of the top physicians in the world on this aspartame subject; we have to further wonder what good the DOH will do, since Hawaii’s House Health Committee declined to take enough stock in their testimonies to even vote on passing or not passing the Bill. It's like going to the people who defend them, like Calorie Control Council, one of their front groups.  This is Ajinomoto's tactic, to use a respectable medical journal for disreputable research, and they pay a lot of money to get this done. They have people in high places everywhere. 

    

You could write a book on it.  In fact, Stauber did, "Trust Us, We're Experts.”  Industry usually uses this propaganda, which is answered with medical references:  http://www.dorway.com/offasprt.html  Scientists exposed the manufacturer of aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine in congressional hearings for this. Take the time to read just some of the documents at the Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame.

      

The Aspartame Review in Toxicology Magazine is totally junk science funded by an aspartame manufacturer, Ajinomoto.  As Mike Adams wrote in News Target, "This conclusion was reached by a panel of industry friendly "experts" hired by Ajinomoto, who did no new research but, instead, selectively reviewed previous studies on the safety of aspartame, many of which were funded by aspartame manufacturers in the first place!      

Further he said, "The panel of experts was called together by the Burdock Group, a consulting firm that earns its money from food and grocery manufacturers like Ajinomoto.  The Ajinomoto Company was reportedly not allowed to actually choose which panel members would be part of the aspartame safety review, but industry critics like Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), responded by saying, "They say Ajinomoto paid for the study

but researchers didn't know who paid.  Well, they knew it was industry, and some ofthese people are longstanding industry consultants.” As an example:  Take Ronald Walker (Critical Reviews in Toxicology).

Ronald Walker: 1. Spent seven (7) years as the ILSI's Chairman of their Scientific Committee on Toxicology/Food Safety in Europe. Monsanto, Ajinomoto, Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Holland Sweetener Company, etc fund ILSI.      

2. Direct financial conflicts of interest:      

a. Consultant for DSM Nutritional Products: Sells "Twinsweet" from Holland Sweetener Company, a mixture of aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine and acesulfame-k. Web site contains aspartame advocacy articles written by Holland Sweetener Company.  (Incidentally Holland Sweetener Company no longer makes aspartame.  It wasn't profitable anymore, and their pubic announcement to get out of the business came as a big surprise, only 3 days after I emailed Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands with detailed articles on this, all translated into perfect Dutch.  Millions are being warned off aspartame.       

b. Cantox Health Sciences. A corporate regulatory advocacy company. Helped write Monsanto's Roundup backgrounder (co-authored by president of Cantox) and has numerous corporate clients. Dr. Ian Munro, President of Cantox co-authored by review (along with NutraSweet employees) of aspartame calling aspartame toxicity a "non-issue."      

3. Wrote a glowing review of Ajinomoto product, monosodium glutamate (MSG) for a symposium funded by Ajinomoto trade group, International Glutamate Technical Committee (IGTC). IGTC hid aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine in drink mixes given to the "control" group in MSG experiments from 1978 through 1993. Dr. Walker did of course, not mention this in the review. Any inclusion of Dr. Walker in any discussion or vote related to aspartame is an insult to scientific integrity.  

ILSI Information: 

On January 9, 2003, The Guardian reported that they obtained a confidential report relating to the food industry experts "infiltrating" the World Health Organization (WHO) Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) committees (Guardian 2003). The report found that:      - Food companies attempted to place scientists favorable to their views on WHO and Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) committees.      - They financially supported non-governmental organizations, which were invited to formal discussions on key issues with the United Nations (UN) agencies.      - They financed research and policy groups that supported their views.       - They financed individuals who would promote "anti-regulation ideology" to the public, for instance in newspaper articles.       "One industry-led organization, International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), has positioned its experts and expertise across the who spectrum of food and tobacco policies: at conferences, on FAO/WHO food policy committees and within WHO, and with monographs, journals and technical briefs." (Guardian 2003) International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) is an industry group founded in 1978 by Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Heinz Foundation, General Foods, Kraft Foods (owned by Philip Morris), and Proctor & Gamble.

Manufacturers of aspartame, Monsanto and Ajinomoto, have branches in various parts of the world that have separate memberships in the ILSI.

Holland Sweetener Company, which sells aspartame, is a member of ILSI (ILSI 2003, Guardian 2003). The ILSI funds research on aspartame and other industry concerns. The ILSI Aspartame Committee is made up of the NutraSweet Company, Ajinomoto Co., Coca Cola Co., Pepsico, Inc., Royal Crown Co., Seven-Up, Inc., and other manufacturers of aspartame-containing products [Gordon 1987]. Just what you want for scientific objectivity, eh? 

News Target’s Mike Adams continued, "What we have here is a case of yet more pro-aspartame propaganda being paraded around as legitimate science.  It's really more of a junk science fraud fest designed to prop up the aspartame industry a little longer even as new science keeps coming out showing the chemical sweetener to be potentially quite dangerous to health.

For the Ajinomoto Company to fund a review by paying money to industry-friendly consulting groups that coincidentally happens to find aspartame to be perfectly safe strains credibility to such a degree that only a fool would put any weight in this announcement.  It's like the R. J. Reynolds Company announcing nicotine is not addictive or Coca-Cola declaring that high fructose corn syrup does not promote obesity.”  "Of course aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine is dangerous to human health.  The chemicals it breaks down into (which include formaldehyde) are documented as nervous system toxins.  In the natural health industry, aspartame is well known to be an "excitotoxin" -- a substance that harms and kills nerve cells.  On top of that, there are literally hundreds of thousands of accounts of people suffering with aspartame consumption.  No other food or beverage ingredient has generated more consumer complaints to the FDA that aspartame." 

 Today there is a 1000 page medical text on the world plague - Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, www.sunsentpress.com  by H. J. Roberts, M.D.  A text by neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., www.russellblaylockmd.com   Even a movie that exposes Don Rumsfeld for being responsible for getting this toxin marketed when the FDA said "no".  He was CEO of Searle at the time. 

After the FDA revoked the petition for approval http://www.mpwhi.com/fda_petition1.doc and even tried to have the manufacturer indicted for fraud (Defense team hired the US Prosecutors) Rumsfeld said he would call in his markers and get aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine marketed.  He was on President Reagan's transition team, and the day after Reagan took office he appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner  to do the deadly deed. Knowing it would take about 30 days to get Hayes to the FDA he actually wrote an executive order making the FDA powerless to do anything about aspartame  until Hayes got there. 

He over-ruled the Board of Inquiry and then went to work for the PR Agency of the manufacturer for $1000.00 per day on a ten-year contract.  See it all in Sweet Misery:  A Poisoned World, www.soundandfury.tv Mike Adams at News Target summed it up:  "TRYING TO PROP UP A CHEMICAL THAT WILL SOON BE ILLEGAL:  The days of aspartame’s dominance as a sweetener are nearly over." 

 So, Hawaiians: please don't be fooled by this review in Toxicology; it is just junk science, another attempt to stumble the public into using a product that once was listed with the pentagon in an inventory of prospective biochemical warfare weapons submitted to Congress.  Read  it in NutraPoison on www.dorway.com   It's also in the Ecologist with a time line:  http://www.mpwhi.com/ecologist_september_2005.pdf, much of which was already published in the Molokai Dispatch, one of the few media outlets in Hawaii which is treating these concerns seriously, along with many many articles and testimony posted at Hawaii Reporter.com!

The Honolulu Advertiser, the largest circulation paper on the Hawaii Islands, seems to essentially dismiss all of this as fanatic paranoia, and has declined to publish my commentary on their editorial pages. Perhaps someone reading this could submit his or her own analysis to the Advertiser and to the Star Bulletin; maybe being from Hawaii would make a difference to their editorial page editors? Please speak up and object to Dr. Fukino of the Department of Health using this junk science, paid for lock stock and barrel by the world’s largest manufacturer of aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine, as the crux of her “expert testimony” to kill the bill. Please speak up and object to Dr. Josh Green, M.D.,  denying the bill a vote in his Health Committee.

Please ask him if he or any of the other committee members have watched the film/DVD that has been given to them, Sweet Misery, by Tucson documentarian Cori Brackett. Reminiscent of Super Size Me, it is somewhat horrifying and very compelling, but all of this is likely to go nowhere if that House Committee on Health can’t or won’t take the time to watch the most compelling and accurate documentary on this subject ever made. Consumer lawyer and former Ralph Nader Raider Jim Turner is in it; Dr. Russell Blaylock and Dr. H.J. Roberts are in it….

I will ask our activists and colleagues in Honolulu to give a copy of this to Dr. Fukino to watch with an open mind: if she has one and if she has true dedication to protecting the health of the people of your great state, she will want to recant her “expert testimony, “ which relied entirely on an industry-paid for “study.” 

There are those in Honolulu who counsel us to move slowly, Hawaii is different than the mainland, start a petition and have 20,000 people sign it over the year, come back to the Legislature then, move slowly, don’t make Josh Green angry, don’t even ask these questions about how much the legislators received in campaign contributions from Coca Cola, who was that guy working for Monsanto who came to the House Health Committee hearing but didn’t say a word, who looked so much like the Phantom of the Opera, don’t expect Hawaii to understand all of this nasty regulatory perfidy overnight, try to answer the needs of the diabetics who use Equal and drink Diet Cokes and chew sugarless gum, even though ingesting a chemical that is metabolized as methanol and formaldehyde is about the worst thing you could to your malfunctioning pancreas….. 

Perhaps they are right. If they are right, Hawaii’s situation is indeed hopeless, since everyone must grovel around and be obsequious about not offending Josh Green, M.D., Emergency Room Physician, ignoring or not being able to grasp the epidemiological proportions of 6000-8000 products containing this terrible neurotoxin. However, I am not asking Josh Green to do anything but wake up to what is really going on and to quit being such great pals with the Phantom of the Opera lobbyist from Monsanto, that mystery lobbyist whose name has thus far eluded us. 

Perhaps Dr. Fukino, DOH Director, may never get the truth that is needed to do her job correctly in the aspartame/methanol department. At least, she could watch Cori Brackett’s DVD. I hope this is not too much to ask of her? The only hope for victims of aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine poisoning is that the next President, be it Obama, Clinton, or that chap from Arizona, will recognize the import of all of this and appoint a new FDA Commissioner who can rescind approval for aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine and a host of other dangerous chemicals, presently “generally recognized as safe.”  

When activists and physicians call Ajinomoto on their lying, they simply don't answer because they can't, and because it’s all a matter of public record; we quote that record.  

There still reminas the Senate Bill sponsored by Kalani English and Suzanne Chun-Oakland, although it has yet to be even scheduled in Sen. David Ige's Health Committee so please call him and ask him to schedule it; if he doesn't, that bill dies.

Let us hope Hawaii Senators show more concern for health than we have seen so far, and the Committee will take the time to watch the DVD, Sweet Misery, which is posted on line, and anyone can watch it for free.

If you are wonder what Diketopiperazine is, this is what aspartame turns into when it is heated, as in coffee as Equal, or when it is heated in the sun, as in Kuwait or Iraq, where it contributed to the Gulf War Syndrome, or when it is absorbed under the tongue after chewing sugarless gum. Toxicologists everywhere recognize it as a cause of brain tumors.

If you question Rumsfeld's role in all of this, please google "Rumsfeld's Bioweapon Legacy," and read the entire article.

What do I have to gain by letting you know all of these facts? Absolutely Nothing. What do these malevolent corporations have to lose if you act responsibly on this accurate medical and scientific information. Everything.

Stephen Fox, Managing Editor Santa Fe Sun News

stephen@santafefineart.com  505 983-2002

Authors Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Authors Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev