Aspartame subsidy decried

As I told you last week, the state of New York wants to impose a 15% soft drink tax that exempts diet sodas - thereby creating a taxpayer subsidy for synthetic toxins like aspartame. Already, the so-called logic behind this exemption is becoming undone.

Numerous separate studies have linked diet soft drinks to diabetes, cancer, and other conditions. A 2005 study by the University of Texas Health Science Center and 2007 reports by the University of Massachusetts and Canada's University of Alberta all found that diet sodas were more likely to cause obesity than regular soft drinks. The Massachusetts study (which the media ignored) found diet sodas carry a risk of diabetes and heart disease.

The FDA and European regulators (agencies that are purchased and paid for by the frankenfoods industry) claim aspartame - known by the brand name NutraSweet - is safe. This claim is patently untrue. Numerous studies by American and European researchers have connected aspartame with cancer, organ damage, and headaches.

Still, a few individuals try to deny that artificial sweeteners are dangerous, and the media is always happy to give them face time. However, they never cite any studies showing that these products are safe - probably because there are none.

The artificial sweetener subsidy may be questioned here and elsewhere, but modern America isn't a society in which science usually prevails. If the proposal to give diet soft drinks a free ride passes, that'll seem to legitimize it and further marginalize dissenters - and the cycle will continue. Kind of like with the Sudafed logs.

And this is how societies end.