NutraSweet Hit by Lawsuits
Court action highlights health concerns about
artificial sweeteners
Critics of the artificial sweetener aspartame in September 2004 filed a
$350 million class-action racketeering lawsuit in California against the
NutraSweet Corporation, the American Diabetes Association, and other
defendents, as reported by the Idaho Observer and the internet news
source NewsWithViews.com.
Plaintiffs argue that patent holders and commercial promoters of
aspartame have intentionally suppressed research which found serious
detrimental health effects associated with aspartame, and conspired to
promote false research results which concealed the bad health effects.
Mentioned in the lawsuit is current secretary of defense Donald
Rumsfeld, who helped the original patent owner of aspartame expedite the
FDA approval process.
A series of three other similar lawsuits were filed in April 2004, also
in California, which target 12 corporations who use aspartame in their
products, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Bayer Corp., the Dannon Company,
the William Wrigley Jr. Company, WalMart, NutraSweet and others. These
suits charge the corporations with using aspartame in their products
while knowing that exposure to aspartame can cause a variety of ill
effects, which include, among others, abdominal pain, arthritis, asthma,
brain cancer, breathing difficulties, burning eyes or throat, burning
urination, chest pains, chronic cough, chronic fatigue, death,
depression, diarrhea, headaches, hearing loss (and that's only getting
to the h's!).
The Idaho Observer notes that almost all common types of chewing gum,
such as Wrigley's or Dentyne, use aspartame, and that these companies
may soon feel compelled to switch to sucralose, another artificial
sweetener which, like aspartame, may act as a cumulative poison.
Doug Collins
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