Is your Diet Coke killing you? Nancy Markles would have you think so. Thankfully for Diet Coke and their loyal drinkers Nancy Markle is a fictional character on the Internet, whose name is being used to spread an electronic health scare about the artificial sweetener aspartame. In the email Markle links aspartame to the cause of multiple sclerosis. “With over a million liters in diet coke consumption on the KU campus there could be a MS epidemic” said Reilly Pharo, University of Kansas senior.
Luckily, Markles story is a total fabrication. In fact if Markle had done any form of research she would have discovered that for starters no one knows the cause of multiple sclerosis and secondly there are no published, peer-reviewed scientific research that supports her claim. The only true good that has come of Markles emails is that people are starting to question all the chemicals in diet foods and wondering about the causes of multiple sclerosis. The problem with generating this entire misleading buzz about MS is that there are no true answers to what causes MS, or what cures it. An estimated 400,000 individuals are reported to have MS in the United States, according to the National MS Society.
“While there is no cure yet, there are a variety of treatments that help to manage symptoms, as well as several new medications that have been shown to be effective in altering the progression of the disease” said Dr. Boblick, Loyola MD. Large-scale studies of potential treatments for MS are underway around the world, along with millions of dollars being spent on research. For more information go to www.nationalMSsociety.org