CKNW Editorial
for August 4, 2000

As I start today I should make it clear that my first guest yesterday, Barbara Muroyama, was selected by the Canadian Diabetes Association to speak for them. And I must say that the CDA has been disingenuous at best … they deny, in writing, that they favour aspartame while Barbara admitted that the Diabetes Clinics, which promotes the hell out of products containing aspartame, are run in partnership with the Canadian Diabetes Association. She indeed while BC and Yukon Nutrionist for CDA, works full time in just such a hospital clinic.

Now let me back up a bit here. I do not accept any government’s word for anything. Call me a contrarian if you will but that’s not only the way I’m built, my skepticism has been proved justified in far too many cases to relate. I’ve been there and I’ve seen the processes at work.

Barbara showed an innocence in accepting the word of the Health Protection Branch’s approval of aspartame that took the breath away. "You have to have something to believe in" she said. The fact is that HPB didn’t test Aspartame, the Food and Drug Administration in the United States did and there seems no doubt that the process was flawed to say the least.

My quarrel with the Canadian Diabetes Association is such that not only do I not support them, I condemn them. They have been economical with the truth but, worst of all, they are not serving their clients.

You must know something about the relationship between CDA and most diabetics. As a newly confirmed diabetic you are immediately pushed, by your doctor, to the local hospital diabetic clinic which is, to a high degree, an offshoot of the Canadian Diabetes Association – as Ms Muroyama admitted yesterday. At this point you are scared and want help. The clinic, treating you, I might say, as a grade VI teacher treats a slightly challenged child, shows you how to test yourself, loads you up with CDA bumph, and then gives you the good news – you can have all these goodies like ice cream, fudgesicles, and popsicles provided they have this Nutrasweet logo on them. (Nutra Sweet is a trade name for aspartame). But it doesn’t end there. The government has somehow been conned by these people into making it a condition of getting free testing strips – which are expensive as hell – that you revisit the clinic every year, demonstrate that you can remember how to test yourself, and listen to the latest diabetic news according to them. So every year you are once more lulled into believing that these people are all-wise and that their advice can be trusted. And you go there because you must. I don’t go – I pay for my own strips in protest.

Now what should the Canadian Diabetes Association be doing?

The should be representing the best interests of the diabetics not the Health Protection Branch. To do that they have an obligation to be absolutely up to speed on all issues. Included in that definition must surely be aspartame which, in the United States at least, has become a huge issue.

I don’t now and never have said that the CDA ought to condemn aspartame. Without any further evidence they might well be justified in accepting the word of government departments. But there is further evidence and the Canadian Diabetes Association has this clear duty – they ought to warn diabetics, in no uncertain terms, that there is a serious issue respecting the safety of aspartame generally and a very serious issue as to whether or not it’s safe for diabetics.

If I were running the show I’d go further. I would recommend against its use. But the very least this outfit ought to do is keep its captive audience informed and warned.

I say that the Canadian Diabetes Association is in serious breach of its duty and has exposed itself, and continues to expose itself to legal dangers should the day come when aspartame is more widely accepted as the dangerous compound it is. This is a tainted blood sort of issue – it will not be open to the Canadian Diabetes Association to claim that it had no idea that aspartame was dangerous.

Now, can the CDA get off the hook legally and morally because this stuff is approved by HPB? I’ll reserve on the question of legal liability but say unequivocally that it has profoundly failed the moral test.

What is also so sad is that this question comes to mind – "If the Canadian Diabetes Association is so casual about its approach to this issue … if they blindly follow the advice of the Health Protection Branch … if they deliberately turn a blind eye to mounting evidence piled upon already existing huge amounts of evidence … and if they fail to even warn their clients - why should we take their word for anything?"