...would have been a story.
Where did aspartame come from? It was first developed by the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle. But Searle had difficulty getting their product approved by the Food and Drug Administration; the monkeys and mice the substance was tested on developed brain lesions, tumors, and seizures, and even died from it. The company's applications for approval were rejected for 16 years, but they persisted in offering their "proof" that aspartame was safe until the FDA finally asked the Department of Justice to prosecute G.D. Searle for submitting fraudulent test data in their efforts to get the substance approved. (An FDA senior toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, once told Congress, "Beyond a shadow of a doubt aspartame triggers brain tumors.")
But then G.D. Searle, producer of aspartame, made Donald Rumsfeld its CEO-yes, Donald Rumsfeld. When Ronald Reagan took office and brought Rumsfeld with him as part of his transition team, a new FDA commissioner was appointed immediately. In one of his first acts as head of the federal agency, the new FDA commissioner approved aspartame, the artificial sweetener made by the company that Donald Rumsfeld was now the head of, over the objections of the FDA scientific board.
You can find the entire article at http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2008/07/spin-on-aspartame.html
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