Everyday Systems: nosdiet: message 1663 of 3212

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On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 12:26:15PM -0500, Bev <quija@...> wrote:
> 
> do you drink diet coke, pepsi or use Equal sugar substitute? read 
this:
> $350 MILLION RICO LAWSUIT FILED OVER ASPARTAME
> (scroll down to read symptoms)
> http://www.newswithviews.com/BreakingNews/breaking25.htm

Haven't we beaten aspartame to death on the list already? Anyone can
file a lawsuit. We *know* that a lot of people think aspartame is
poisonous; we also know that no-one's actually been able to *demonstrate*
that in a controlled experiment. 

Lawsuits tend to be a hobby of conspiracy theorists and others of that
bent:

Citizens Against UFO Secrecy Files Lawsuit Against Army:
http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/archives/1998.03/msg00049.html

CNN - 3 Yemenis sue NASA for trespassing on Mars:
http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/archives/1997.07/msg00028.html

Suing Janet Reno over invisible lasers:
http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/archives/1997.10/msg00044.html

Suing CIA, Madonna over mind control:
http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/archives/1997.11/msg00076.html

Government oppresses cyborgs, lawsuit:
http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/archives/1997.11/msg00086.html


No-one inside or outside the US has been able to verify the
anti-aspartame movement's scientific claims, so they've decided to take
it out of the scientific world and into the court system. No surprise
there; judges are a lot easier to fool than scientists, and a win on
"procedure was not followed at the FDA" is identical to a win on 

"aspartame really causes MS" for the sort of folks who file these
lawsuits. The lawsuit itself (available at
http://www.wnho.net/nutrasweet_company_lawsuit.htm) 
reads like a
textbook psychoceramic conspiracy theory. 

My usual debunking URLs:

http://www.snopes.com/toxins/aspartame.asp
http://www.junkscience.com/news/nutrasweet.html
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htm
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/headlines-aspartame.asp
http://www.food.gov.uk/safereating/additivesbranch/sweeteners/55174

I don't know that newswithviews.com is a particularly good website
to use as a source, by the way -- on the main page, I see ads for 9/11
conspiracy theories, One World Government and New World Order books,
gold merchants (some kooks prefer to hoard gold because they are
convinced that paper currency is about to become valueless), and
articles exonerating Timothy McVeigh and apologetics over anti-Semitic
groups. It's the sort of place where I'd *expect* to find anti-aspartame 

lawsuits covered, but I'm not sure it's something one would want to
be associated with.

Then again, I can't find any mainstream news organizations that have
picked up the story -- Google News just has the press release on a
few wires plus an article in "Conspiracy Planet".

http://news.google.com/news?q=aspartame+rico

-Rich

-- 
Rich Lafferty --------------+-----------------------------------------------
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!
http://www.lafferty.ca/ | http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html
rich@... -----------+-----------------------------------------------