Editor,
The artificial sweetener aspartame is a carcinogenic neurotoxin since one of its metabolites is formaldehyde. The recent Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology's study proves it to cause six kinds of cancer, and was posted on the National Institutes of Health Web site in November 2005.
Physicians and plaintiff's lawyers have been excoriating aspartame's carcinogenicity since the '70s. The FDA refuses to correct its approval, so aspartame is found in coffee sweeteners, diet beverages, low-fat yogurt, sugarless gum - a total of 6,000 other products consumed by 70 percent of Americans and 40 percent of our children.
I ask the governor to place a bill on his 2006 agenda banning aspartame from sale in New Mexico. This is long overdue; it would be a precedent for New Mexico to pass such a bill in 2006 and not have to wait for the 2007 long session. When it comes to toxicology and the need to remove this deadly neurotoxin from foods and medicines, six months or nine months or 18 months is an eternity.
If and when Richardson puts this bill on the agenda, the FDA will immediately move toward rescinding aspartame's approval. Industries should switch to Stevia or Xylitol, both nontoxic, natural sweeteners, and they wouldn't have to lose a dime of their sacred profits.
President Bush won't do anything about aspartame; the FDA ignores letters and citizen's petitions; the state Environmental Improvement Board has basically failed in a regulatory sense by postponing hearings till 2007, so the Legislature and the governor's agenda are truly the last hope for protecting New Mexican's health, and such a bill could go into effect in July 2007.
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Please write to Gov. Richardson and encourage him to put a bill to ban aspartame on his agenda for 2006.
Stephen Fox
Daily Lobo reader
