Aspartame/Formaldehyde and Thimerosal/Mercury in Children's Medications, Vitamins, and Vaccines gett

Added: (Tue Nov 15 2005)

Pressbox (Press Release) - It was a “draw” at the November 14 meeting of the New Mexico Pharmacy Board, the only board which has the express power to do such a ban in medications and vaccines: largely due to the complete surprise of an “unexpected guest,” a Harvard lawyer and corporate legislative lobbyists, representing your favorite aspartame manufacturer, the Japanese mega corporation, Ajinomoto.

He wasn’t on the agenda; he was representing the most corporate oriented firm in New Mexico, and he essentially told the Board of Pharmacy: “You don’t have the power to challenge an FDA approved product. Besides, why worry? Aspartame is totally safe, and besides that, you would have to hire ten or twenty people just to red through the millions, maybe tens of millions, of pages at the FDA, which prove that it is safe! These petitioners should be making their complaint, if it were really valid and not frivolous, directly to the FDA, because they think you are easier to push around!”

He even promised that there will be litigation to prevent the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board, a different board considering banning aspartame in food, not pharmaceutical products, from having its 5 day hearing next July. Why not? His new client, Ajinomoto, has very deep pockets, and he can thereby run up a humongous bill…

I pointed out to the Board that he was essentially bludgeoning them into acquiescence, and that the legislature had long ago given them regulatory powers over medications, and the power to promulgate rules if a product was injurious, dangerous, adulterated, or mislabeled. The legislature also wanted them to move forward, which they must do, and not come back to the Legislature to ask them to do the banning.


The Board demurred. Their counsel and Asst. Attorney General assigned to them, Kathyleen Kunkel told them that they did have the power, that she hadn’t talked with the Attorney General herself, and that she would do so soon.

In my unplanned rebuttal, I hammered the point that the flawed FDA approval processes were already besieged in numerous court decisions, particularly those involving Vioxx in Texas, Zoloft in Minnesota, and Thimerosal in Louisiana. The FDA’s approval of Aspartame meant even less; to call it a meaningful or viable preemption was absurd, especially given the mountain of neurodegenerative problems piling up as evidence since approval in 1981 and 1983 for soft drinks, and since Senator Howard Metzenbaum’s bill to require labeling for aspartame was killed in committee in 1985.

One important question: did Bill Clinton truly remove aspartame from the FDA’s “closely watched list” towards the end of the 1990’s? And did Senator Kennedy publicly support that Clinton decision? This was a point raised by the newest Pharmacy Board member, Allen Carrier of Santa Fe, who at one point was the personal assistant for Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation for Clinton.

I referred Allen Carrier back to a comment made by Senator Kennedy about how the original data G.D. Searle submitted to obtain aspartame’s approval was rigged, sloppy, and phony; I reminded the Board of who Arthur Hull Hayes was, the FDA Commissioner who approved the sweetener, and where he came from, as well as the President of G.D. Searle at that time, who had so much to gain by forcing aspartame’s approval through the FDA. I even conceded that both of New Mexico’s U.S. Senators who are still in office, back in 1985 voted against Metzenbaum’s labeling bill, but that times had changed and that they wouldn’t do so today.

I did a fiery and memorable job impugning the FDA approval process in the minds of the Pharmacy Board members, especially since the product that turns to formaldehyde is in hundreds of children’s medications and products that pharmacies all over America regularly sell, both by prescription and over the counter.

The Board discussed waiting till the EIB ruled, and then finally decided to hang everything on the New Mexico Attorney General’s opinion. The Vice Chair, Amy Buesing, R.Ph., who represents the Hospital Industry on the Board, made a motion to table, depending on the attorney general’s opinion as to whether they as a board have the statutory power to challenge an FDA approved product.

Her motion was seconded simultaneously by Howard Shaver from Albuquerque, who was drinking a diet Coke, and by the Mayor of Milan, Tom Ortega, R.Ph. Ortega said we should have more faith in the FDA, that he had learned as Mayor to work with federal authorities, and that we didn’t want to cause children to not get their vaccinations and stop taking their vitamins, and that that lack of water in Grants, New Mexico, was far more serious than neurotoxins like aspartame, or so he concluded.



New Mexico’s Attorney General is Patricia Madrid, and she is running for Congress from the Albuquerque District against Republican incumbent, Heather Wilson. Her deputy is Stuart Bluestone.

Letters to both of them should come from all over the world, especially from victims, physicians, and lawyers, which address these questions and help her and Stuart see the merits of protecting New Mexicans’ health by standing up to an FDA approved product which has caused so much harm and will continue to cause such harm, all the while the Pharmacy Board is waiting: waiting for the Attorney General’s opinion and waiting for the Environmental Improvement Board, whose hearing is not until next July.

[In retrospect, I should have made a rough calculation of how many trillion brain cells in New Mexico’s 400,000 children would be destroyed by aspartame before July 2006, while they waited, and that if Agent Orange were discovered in their children’s’ toothpaste or lead in their Pedialyte or Children’s Tylenol, would they really think it necessary to wait 7 months to see what some other Board might do?

I did mention that Governor Bill Richardson and U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman would like to write to them in the very near future to encourage their deliberations on aspartame, and the Pharmacy Board Chairman, Woodrow Storey, R.Ph., welcomed that idea warmly. He also said he would be glad to be on a subcommittee of three from the Board or even a new Governor’s Task Force.

Also, Buffie Saavedra, daughter of the NM House Appropriations Committee, Henry “Kiki” Saavedra, and Rudy Nolasco, R.Ph., a pharmacist from Las Vegas New Mexico who complained that flu vaccines without mercury cost him an extra $10 in a recent flu clinic at his pharmacy, both said very encouraging things about our petition.

The Board’s Secretary, Danny Cross, R.Ph., of Carlsbad New Mexico, was silent during the proceedings, which lasted about 90 minutes.

The Vice Chair’s motion to table until the A.G. responds to confirm their statutory powers passed unanimously, 9-0. The Chairman said he wanted to be sure that they advanced completely sure of their legal powers. I concluded my comments by saying that that was what I wanted too!

My Co petitioner and world expert on Mercury as a cause of Autism in Children, Dr. Ken Stoller, was on ABC T.V. on the evening news, and we were both on a Spanish language station, with my remarks entirely in Spanish. There were no newspaper reporters present that I could see.

So that is what happened, and I make clear that aspartame opponents should write to Attorney General Madrid and to Governor Bill Richardson soon. Please send letters to:

The Honorable Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico
4th Floor, The Capitol, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
Attention Chief of Staff, David Contarino [505] 827-3000


To: The Honorable Patricia Madrid, Attorney General of New Mexico
The Bataan Building, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 [505] 827-6000

And to: The Honorable Stuart Bluestone, Deputy Attorney General of New Mexico
The Bataan Building, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 [505] 827-6004

Please ask for a reply, and please ask your friends, colleagues, and family to also write these 3 letters. I certainly don’t intend for this issue to die a slow bureaucratic death. Remember, this was the first presentation to the Pharmacy Board, and I think speaking in an evidentiary sense, we are in a much stronger position after the first presentation than we were after the first presentation to the Environmental Improvement Board back in June.

We certainly have identified the enemy: Ajinomoto, a gigantic Japanese conglomerate, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of neurotoxic additives to food and medicine, the world’s largest for aspartame and for Monosodium Glutamate as well.

The end users of these products like Coca Cola, Dannon Yogurt, Wrigley’s Gum, and others, should be worried as well, and perhaps some new corporations in the Aspartame pantheon like the pharmaceuticals which use them should be worried, and should recognize the danger we pose to them, now that we are on their very self-serving “radar screen.” After all, product liability suits for aspartame damages could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, when the Attorneys General of the states recognize that there is no real difference between Big Aspartame and Big Tobacco. These many corporations may hire excellent lawyers, but the medical evidence is so strong against them.

I have faith that the people of New Mexico and their concern for health will in the long run clobber these corporate boilerplate lawyers from the firm of Hired Guns and Hacks, even if they did go to Harvard Law School.

I look forward as always to your insights and very brightest ideas about to kick the aspartame monster corporations out of New Mexico entirely, once and for all time.


STEPHEN FOX
STEPHEN@SANTAFEFINEART.COM
217 W. Water St. Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
505 983-2002