Senator Ortiz y Pino Continues Fight to Ban Aspartame

Please support this important FDA action. And hopefully, this time around, Ajinmoto will not send big checks - like the 10K Bill Richardson accepted - to interfere with fact and the people's will.

New Mexico Senate
Santa Fe, New Mexico
February 12, 2009

The Honorable Frank Torti, M.D.
Acting Commissioner, United States Food and Drug Administration
5400 Fishers Lane
Rockville, Maryland

Dear Dr. Torti:

I am the New Mexico sponsor of the enclosed Senate Memorial 9, 2009, asking the Food and Drug Administration to rescind its approval for the artificial sweetener, aspartame.

You may know that the FDA, to its credit, turned down G.D. Searles application for aspartame's approval from 1966 to 1981, at which point, approval was forced through the FDA at the insistence fo Searles CEO, Donald Rumsfeld.

Numerous physicians petitions as well as many private petitions have been filed with FDA since 1981 asking for the rescinding of aspartames approval. These have all been routinely ignored and responded to with industry assurance about how many industry financed "tests" aspartame has been through, all of which showed "aspartame to be safe."

FDA used to keep records on consumer complaints on aspartame, accruing a minimum of 92 alleged symptoms from ingesting aspartame, ranging from headaches, blurred vision, skin rashes, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis to that ultimate symptom, DEATH.

Dr. Torti, this chemical has produced a massive mountain of medical and neurodengenerative evidence, which I believe would lead you to order it removed from the market. While it is too late to do this now as a "precaution"; it is even more imperative to do this as a means of preventing further medical harm to future victims.

This Memorial is advancing in the New Mexico Senate, after being cosponsored by ten of my colleagues. A similar version of the Memorial has also been introduced by Hawaii Senator Chun Oakland, and is cosponsored by ten members of the Hawaii Senate. That resolution will create an evidentiary repository for Hawaii victims, especially those with diabetes and epileptic seizures, now statistically epidemic in Hawaii, with links to aspartame.

In January 2009, Hawaii Senator Kalani English introduced SB576 in that state. It would ban aspartame entirely in Hawaii. This bill is cosponsored by an astonishing 14 members of the 25 member Hawaii Senate. At the same time, Representative Mele Carroll has introduced HB669, also banning aspartames sale and use in Hawaii.

I realize a permanent FDA Commissioner has not yet been selected by the Obama Administration, but when one is appointed, I will send a similar letter to him/her to again request this action in order to protect the American public from further harm from a chemical that the FDA has known for 43 years is metabolized as methanol, formaldehyde, aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and the proven carcinogen, diketopiperazine.

This regulatory failure of epic proportions entirely resulted from the actions of Donald Rumsfeld when he was with the original patent holder for aspartame. There is sufficient evidence to warrant such a rescinding, a situation not unlike that in 1969 when President Richard Nixon similarly ordered the FDA to take away the approval for another group of carcinogens, cyclamates, which occurred very quickly.

Our concern must be the overarching concerns of preventing further neurodengenerative and carcinogenic damage to hundreds of millions of Americans, who have no other government entity to trust and depend on than the United State Food and Drug Administration!

I believe that President Obama, Congressman Bart Stupak, and Congresswoman Rosa Delauro all want to see the rebuilding of an FDA that merits the restored trust of the American people. I certainly want to see this come about, and I hope you do as well.

Rescinding aspartames FDA approval would be a major credible first step in the right direction.

Sincerely yours,
Gerald Ortiz y Pino
New Mexico State Senator
District 12
Albuquerque

Aspartame: Sweet, Sweet Poison

This is an article you most likely will never see in the US mainstream press.

You should however because aspartame is a toxic substance first developed as an insecticide, as was sucralose.

The article just might cause you to switch and lay off this chemical stuff that damages your mitochondrial DNA, leading to diseases of many kinds.

Just another way of covertly creating a cadre of lab rats, as I see it.

By Carlos H. Conde

During the past several weeks, an advertisement has been appearing in the Philippines’s major newspapers that extols aspartame, the artificial sweetener that goes by the brands Equal, Nutrasweet, to name two. The ad, about half a page in size, makes the assertion that aspartame is safe and that the food-and-drug regulatory agencies of the Philippines and of the United States, among other countries, have determined it to be so. The ad does not carry the name of any group or individual, thus it is safe to assume that the aspartame industry is behind it.

I am always convinced that if somebody tries to mislead the public, he would publish advertisements so frequently until the public accepts the ad’s assertion as the truth. This was the strategy that Joseph Goebbels used and perfected in selling Nazism to the German people. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” Goebbels had said. This is the underlying principle of advertising and public relations.

The question is, Why would the makers of aspartame spend millions of pesos to convince the public about the safety of their product? Particularly at a time when the use of the sweetener, so far as I can tell, is exploding in the Philippines, what with Coca-Cola recently launching its Zero brand? Coke Zero, of course, uses aspartame.

I am sure the answer lies in the fact that there’s still much debate about the safety of aspartame.

Read the complete story here: Aspartame: Sweet, Sweet Poison.