- Michael J. Fox is still drinking the diet soda.
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- Many medical professionals and health activists loudly
proclaim that aspartame sweetener in diet sodas causes symptoms that mimic,
or accentuate Parkinson's disease. The first class-action lawsuits have
already been filed. Michael is diagnosed with Parkinson's.
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- A prudent person might well have long ago eliminated
the notorious additive from their diet. But, incredibly, Michael J. Fox
seems to still be drinking the soda.
-
- Before he appeared on last week's Oprah show, promoting
his new book "Lucky Man," reporter Ann Oldenburg, for USA Today,
interviewed him about his medical condition. She wrote:
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- "He just can't sit still. Will that glass of diet
soda make it to his lips without spilling? It does."
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- Consider this: A man we all know and many love, sipping
with trembling hands the very drink that may be slowly killing him.
Unfortunately,
this is not a scene from a movie. This is real life for Mr. Pepsi
1987.
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- THE CHOICE OF A HYPED GENERATION
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- Ironically, in the movie "Back to the Future,"
Michael J. Fox is taken back in time to a soda fountain shop in the early
nineteen fifties.
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- Michael's character, Marty McFly, asks the man behind
the counter for a diet soda: a "Pepsi Free." The man behind the
counter replies: "Nothing is free in here but water." Then Fox
asks for a "Tab" (another diet soda), and the man behind the
counter states: "You don't get a tab until you order
something."
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- That's what they call run-of-film product placement.
By means of star endorsements and in-movie placements, soda corporates
have been spectacularly effective in getting us all to swallow their
artificially
colored, artificially flavored water.
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- Michael also starred in "Apartment 10G," a
1987 Pepsi commercial with Gail O'Grady, of NYPD Blue, in which he risked
life and limb running through rain, over car hoods, and through traffic
to bring her a can of her favorite soda.
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- His love affair with the "free" goes back a
long way. Michael Andrew Fox was born June 9 1961 in Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada. Always diminutive, he longed to be taller. Michael read that eating
made you grow, so he ate until he had gained 20lb in weight.
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- After early acting successes, he ended up in debt and
selling off furniture to buy food. Michael felt he had to do something
about his weight to improve his chances at casting sessions. He went on
a crash diet. He stopped eating. From then on, the slimmed down star was
a prime candidate for the diet sodas introduced around 1984.
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- When he appeared in the 1987 Pepsi commercial, their
public relations people milked the star's endorsement for all it's worth.
Michael spent countless hours clutching glasses of Pepsi, with his home
refrigerator virtually patched into Pepsi's production line. Michael was
reportedly soon an avid consumer of Diet Pepsi.
-
- That exposure set him up for a curious medical
phenomenon:
addiction to the substance causing the damage. Every free can came at a
terrible hidden price. As the soda fountain storekeeper in 'Back to the
Future' puts it: "nothing is free -but the water."
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- THE VIRUS RED HERRING
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- Many doctors report improvement in chronic medical
conditions
when their patients avoid aspartame. However, the manufacturers, the US
regulators and the Parkinson's research establishment dismiss these reports
as anecdotal. They insist that "scientific evidence" shows
aspartame
is safe.
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- In truth, their "science" is often just
pseudoscientific
claptrap. Their latest wild goose chase is that Parkinson's may be linked
to a virus. Even as Michael J. Fox currently tours the talk show circuit,
the leading Canadian Parkinson's researcher, Dr. Donald Calne, is
reportedly
heralding a possible viral cause of Parkinson's.
-
- His evidence? Three of Michael's costars on a situation
comedy called "Leo and Me" have also developed Parkinson's
disease.
Dr. Calne, director of the Neurodegenerative Disorder Center at the
University
of British Columbia Hospital, theorizes that the four might have been
exposed
to a Parkinson's trigger virus in the air conditioning system on the show's
production set.
-
- Breathless and talk show hosts and fawning news reports
reveal that four of the 125 people on the set of "Leo and Me"
in 1976, are now diagnosed with Parkinson's -- compared to a national
incidence
of 1 in 300 people. Dr. Calne calculates the odds of such a cluster by
chance at 1000 to 1.
-
- Hold it right there! This data is statistical dross.
This is EXACTLY the data clustering we would expect to find in a normal
distribution of Parkinson's among groups of less than 300 people. There
will always be isolated incidences where there are congruencies. Conversely
there will be also be a large number of population sets of 300 where there
is no incidence of Parkinson's whatsoever.
-
- Surely the bell curve of a normal distribution is
familiar
to any student of Statistics 101. If the sample has only 125 people, you
find precisely these variations. Only when the sample size is increased
from hundreds -- to hundreds of thousands, does the data approach
meaningfulness.
-
- If Dr. Calne's pseudo-science is any indication, then
Parkinson's research is out to lunch. The same establishment which passes
off such meaningless speculation as science, has the nerve to dismiss the
experience of doctors as anecdotal and the concerns of the public as
"nonscientific."
And, like Dr. Calne, they have control of the available research
dollars.
-
- Perhaps, after all, we had better carefully review the
evidence so readily dismissed about the toxicity of aspartame.
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- FIRE ANTS AND HEAVY METAL
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- The establishment view is that ingestion of aspartame
produces levels of toxins are typically insignificantly low. The critics
say that aspartame is significantly metabolized in the body to aspartic
acid, phenylalanine and methyl alcohol.
-
- Aspartic acid is excitotoxic, it excites neurons or brain
cells to death --thus the link to Parkinson's. The methyl alcohol breaks
down into formaldehyde, then formic acid. How dangerous are these
toxins?
-
- Consider fetal alcohol syndrome: it produces deformity
and disability in infants who suffer maternal alcohol abuse. Yet, methyl
alcohol is fifty times more potent than beverage alcohol. Formaldehyde
is 5,000 times more potent. Critics say the combination is equivalent to
ingesting deadly fire ant venom and embalming fluid - albeit in minuscule
quantities.
-
- Besides the direct effects of these toxins, there is
evidence from research into Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative
diseases that toxin-induced accumulation of metals in the brain is a key
disease mechanism.
-
- Much research into Parkinson's in agricultural
communities,
has linked the disease with high exposure to pesticides, herbicides and
fertilizers. Other research in mining communities has shown aluminum and
manganese play a role in the degeneration. Besides it's direct effects,
aspartame may well also speed the brain's uptake of these metals to toxic
levels.
-
- A significant minority of people are highly succeptible
to these toxic effects. That's why this writer, as a matter of personal
health safety, will not be drinking a possible metal chleator in a beverage
stored inside an aluminum can. Do I feel lucky, punk? No, not that
lucky.
-
- But our public health safety regulators are feeling very
lucky. All the while, a creeping epidemic of youthful neurological
degeneration
gathers pace.
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- A MESSAGE FOR MICHAEL
-
- Ms. Betty Martini of aspartame campaign group, Mission
Possible International, does not mince words. In a statement on the Michael
J. Fox controversy, she stated: "Aspartame is being used by 2/3rds
of the population today and 40% of our children, and is a deadly neurotoxic
drug. ...We are now taking case histories for class action starting with
brain tumors, seizures, eye deterioration and blindness triggered by
aspartame.
An investigation could be the beginning of help for millions."
-
- PETITION
-
- We fan's of Michael, Parkinson's sufferers and ordinary
citizens are concerned that he may be unknowingly worsening his condition
with diet sodas containing aspartame.
-
- As signatories, we call on the Michael J. Fox Foundation
to represent the interests of Parkinson's suffers -- without fear or favor
of the vested interests in medical research and industry. We call for...
Read On....
-
- It is worth stating that a virus cannot be sued by
poisoned
consumers, and a virus cannot be hauled to a Congressional investigation.
Therefore a Parkinson's virus will inevitably prove a far better candidate
for scientific research dollars than aspartame.
-
- The message for Michael is that aspartame is clearly
not worth the risk to his health, and merits renewed review of it's public
safety. Unfortunately the research foundation that bears Michael's name,
has so far not even acknowledged the evidence sent to it by aspartame
critics.
-
- SickofDoctors.com has sponsored an online petition to
alert Michael and his Parkinson's foundation to the role of aspartame.
You can help send this important message to Michael. After all, a previous
petition that was featured at PetitionOnline.com prompted a response from
Bill Gates' Microsoft.
-
- Join the Quit the Soda Petition All email addresses
confidential
held by PetitionOnline.com only.
-
- URL OF THIS PAGE IS
http://www.sic
kofdoctors.addr.com/articles/quitthesoda.htm
-
- mail@sickofdoctors.com
© 2002 SickofDoctors.com
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