Dear Mr. Alston:

I enjoyed reading your article. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a waiter in a restaurant who had Equal and Saccharin on the table. I gave him some information but he said: "In this restaurant we want people to have a choice, either the pink or the blue" I replied the only way people would have a choice is if the pink one said "sweetener" and the blue one said: "poison". Then they would have the ability to choose whether to live or whether to die. Today I have a flyer to give the waiter: http://www.mpwhi.com/waiter_remove_this_neurotoxic_drug.htm

Frankly, I think aspartame should have a skull and crossbones on it. At one time when a victim who didn't know what was killing her had left town to buy a burial plot in her hometown, her medical student daughter actually found a bottle of aspartame with a skull and crossbones in the lab. Immediately she notified her mother who gave it up and came home without the purchased burial plot and got well.

I see you're a marathon runner and it reminds me of another runner who died of a seizure. You may remember Flo Jo. She loved Diet Coke and, of course, the aspartame is addicting having a methyl ester which immediately becomes free methyl alcohol classified as a narcotic. It causes chronic methanol poisoning which effects the dopamine system of the brain and causes addiction. Perhaps she couldn't get off of it. She didn't know that athletes are dropping dead because aspartame not only is a seizure triggering drug, but causes an irregular heart rhythm, interacts with all cardiac medication, damage the cardiac conduction system and causes sudden death. Here are the medical reports: http://www.rense.com/general67/alert.htm and http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_and_arrhythmias.htmNow Flo Jo could have been saved when she decided to choose, if only the label had been sincere and said: "Seizure triggering drug, interacts with anti-seizure medication, extremely serious for marathon runners because it causes sudden death." If that label had been on the Diet Coke with aspartame Flo Jo would probably be alive today because she could have chosen not to use it.

Then there was the woman who used aspartame during three pregnancies and has three autistic children. She could have chosen wisely if only the label had read: " Causes birth defects including autism".

Actually, I think there should be a special aspartame label for men: "Triggers male sexual dysfunction but have no fear Viagra is here."

For all the ones I wept about, the youngsters who died of aspartame brain tumors, in the prime of their life, perhaps there could have been a label that said: "Aspartame breaks down to brain tumor agent, DKP, and is a multipotential carcinogen." These youngsters could have then chosen not to use it and live.

Since the Trocho Study showed the formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol embalms living tissue perhaps there should be a standard death label: This product kills but embalms you free.

Then what do we do for the mental problems? I know, how about a label that states: Triggers psychiatric and behavioral problems, interacts with anti-depressants. Psychiatrists see medical text. As the experts have said for years, so many mental hospitals full of patients who are only aspartame victims.

What about the diabetics? They should have a label that says: "Aspartame can precipitate diabetes, destroys the optic nerve, simulates and aggravates diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, causes diabetics to go into convulsions and interacts with insulin. The methanol in this product can cause you to lose limbs." I know, it's too long. I guess it would simply have to say: "Kills diabetics"!

Having to do with the obesity issue, I think the label could really be short: "If you want to get fat, NutraSweet is where it's at." How's that? What about for the infertile? Maybe the label could simply say: "Endocrine Disrupting Drug - no baby!"

I know the label is not big enough to list the 92 symptoms on the FDA report including death. There is a solution, however. How about simply a label that states: "Genocide: Keep out of reach of humans." Now people have the right to choose.... They will know exactly what they are consuming and can decide if they wish to live or die.

In the meantime, with propaganda from aspartame manufacturers, front groups, professional organizations and the FDA, people can't choose because they have no idea what they are consuming. We could probably shorten the label even more: "Biochemical warfare weapon". http://www.mpwhi.com/Ecologist_September_2005.pdf They definitely would get the idea of what to expect.

You see, Mr. Alston, if people are to have the right to choose, then they should also have the right to know what they are choosing. Otherwise, they may give up their life, and never know they choose death because they were not given the right to know what they were consuming.

I do believe that people have a certain responsibility to research what they put in their mouth. But when they are lied to and deceived unless there were operations like ours to warn and work to ban, millions more would be dead. As Dr. Alemany said who did the Trocho Study: "Aspartame can kill 200 million people." You want to be free to choose. I want to be alive to choose and know what I'm choosing. That's where we differ. If aspartame had never been approved through the political chicanery of Don Rumsfeld, I could have spent these last almost 18 years doing things that my husband and myself had looked forward to doing with his retirement funds instead of warning the world. But you see, I also choose to have a conscience and cared to save consumers from Rumsfeld's Plague so they could live long enough to have a retirement.

All my best,

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Founder, Mission Possible World Health International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com
http://www.wpwhi.com
http://www.whno.net
http://www.dorway.com

Aspartame Toxicity Center: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

Written by Wilton D. Alston
Wednesday, 24 September 2008 11:57

Given that I'm a runner, nay a marathoner, as well a bit of a health-nut, I might be expected to have a bit of a soft spot for any move to get rid of poison like aspartame.

Apple Certainly then, Hawaii's proposed ban on aspartame should appeal to me, no? Borrowing a phrase from the Hertz commercials, "Not exactly." From an article by Op-Ed News columnist Betty Martini we find:

The Hawaii House Health Committee was to consider the bill to ban aspartame, but it never happened. Chairman Josh Green, M.D. deferred this lifesaving initiative, which means the committee won't be able to vote on the overwhelming testimony of renowned medical authorities, physicians and researchers that aspartame is a neurotoxin, unfit for human consumption, inflicting disabilities and death on multitudes.

One can, upon reading the piece, see that Dr. Martini is both passionate and informed about the dangers of aspartame. I do not care to offer any debate on any substantive point she makes about the dangers of aspartame. Frankly, her information is compelling. For instance:

Paralysis is one of the 92 disabilities the Food & Drug Administration named in their 1995 list of aspartame reactions which they now deny ever existed. FDA derived these from over 10,000 complaints volunteered by American consumers; more than those reported to FDA for any other additive. FDA slammed the complaint window in 1996 and have ignored all testimony and research, including over 100 damning scientific peer reviewed studies on the devastating consequence of consuming aspartame. Seizures, sexual dysfunction, birth defects, blindness, paranoia, diabetes, migraines, obesity, and its a multi-potential carcinogen concluded an award winning 3-year study on1,800 rats by Dr. M. Soffritti of the Ramazzini Institute. The 2005 study was peer reviewed by 7 world experts. His second study showed it only takes a small amount to cause cancer and if pregnant women use it and their baby survives the offspring can get cancer.

Were the decision mine, I would un-create aspartame in a minute. But the decision is not mine, and that's where Dr. Martini and I diverge. Debating about the facts, or lack thereof regarding aspartame is using the argument from effect. By this I mean that one is faced with a case of "dueling facts and opinions" from which either decision could be made. In cases such as this, it is my position that the argument from morality is a better approach. That is to say, no matter the evidence, the State (or any group of people) is not justly authorized to decide for everyone else. Simply put, all people should be free to choose a behavior that effects their most basic initial possession, their bodies. That the chosen action might be unwise is irrelevant. As I asked some time ago, if the State protects me from myself, who will protect me from the State? Although I was talking, at that time, about the proposed ban on trans fats, the logic is exactly analogous. From that article:

"People are (or should be) free to choose. If they really don't want to consume trans fats, they are free to not do so. If a restaurant wants to use them, I am free to not dine there while you are free to enjoy them if you like. Everyone is happy. Secondly, the prevalence of trans fats is largely the result of government interference anyway, so why would even more government involvement make things better? Let's review this little scenario:

• Initially people are free to use whatever they want, including lard, butter, coconut oil, olive oil, and/or palm oil, etc. (Some people are fat, but hey, that was less about the fats and more about their lifestyle choices, among other things.)

• Aggressive lobbying by the edible oil industry causes adoption, at the federal government level, of dietary goals and guidelines that incorporate the mistaken idea that consumption of saturated fat causes heart disease. (State intervention makes finding a domestic substitute for these fats financially critical.)

• Because of inherent limitations, polyunsaturated vegetable oils are unsuitable for baking; partially hydrogenated oils are developed to mitigate these effects. (Manufacturers, seeking to maximize profits while meeting the federal guidelines eagerly incorporate this stuff into, well, everything.)

• After years of clogged arteries, heart attacks, bypass surgeries and the like, somebody discovers that making a cheap vegetable oil into a baking fat via the magic of chemistry also changes the properties of that oil for the worse. (Who knew?)

• State intervention seeks to preclude that which was originally facilitated largely by state intervention - trans fats are banned. (Complete symmetry is achieved.)"

"It's not my place to make choices of this type for anyone else and neither is it the government's place. (I've already got a mother, but thanks anyway.) Let the right and the responsibility rest where they should."

Having the government ban aspartame, trans fats, or anything else, simply opens up the door for some other self-interested body to lobby them to mandate some other additive.

While I'm certainly no fan of artificial sweeteners, I'm still willing to take my chances, without the FDA or Congress looking over my shoulder at my plate.