That article has a lot of fear mongering about artificial sweeteners and then at the bottom an ad for "certifiedorganicevaporatedcanejuice.com". Maybe it's not the most objective source of information?
Rumsfeld was the CEO at Searle - the makers of Aspartame... And he used his political influence to replace the FDA commissioner so Aspartame could be legalized. That's a conflict of interest.
its legal in plenty of other places and the bulk of research (some very recent) seems to show that it is very safe within the constraints of those studies, with the well documented and understood exception of people with phenylketonuria.
this makes it very hard for me to believe in the corruption argument, no one individual has the power or money to do something on that scale. maybe its a coordinated effort, but such arguments strain credibility. even if we assume corruption, it is not relevant to the safety discussion if we have piles of evidence that something is only dangerous in well understood cases.
on the other hand, we will never really know for sure, and we don't even have a complete picture until enough people have been consuming it for long enough 'in the wild'... but the same is true about anything discovered recently.
and of course, the individual case you point out is shocking regardless as to the safety of aspartame.
But then apart from the FDA, Canada, the UK, Europe, Singapore, probably many more, have all OK'd it and it's still approved. Surely his political influence doesn't cover dozens of countries over nearly half a century.
Aspartame is 50 years old now. Any researcher that showed a clear damaging effect would instantly be set for life, no? I know that isn't strong evidence, but it's some evidence.
I don't know what it is about artificial sweeteners in general, but I think people hate the idea of getting something for free, that you can literally enjoy a sweet dessert without paying for it in calories.
In SF, it's obnoxious, to the point of places not even carrying sucralose or aspartame, only <shudder>, Stevia. Or people saying, with a straight face, "Yep, our tea has real sugar, so it's far better for you."
