Original source: http://www.dorway.com/astimes1.html

Long before it achieved FDA approval for use in foods, beverages and drugs, questions regarding the safety of synthetic sweetener aspartame have been the subject of much controversy. It has even been characterized as a poison linked to a variety of chronic ailments
A growing body of scientists, doctors and laypeople insist that aspartame disease is an ignored epidemic and an underlying cause of chronic ill-health in America today. Conversely, aspartame producers, food and beverage industry trade associations, government regulators and some scientists and physicians claim aspartame is completely safe and its worst characteristic is that it's non-nutritive.
Are aspartame and other synthetic sweeteners like saccharin and neotame harmless? Or are they government-approved poisons?
After reading this publication, follow your instincts and become your own expert: The life you save may be your own.

God, refined sweets and political power
In the beginning, there were sweet fruits, vegetables and raw honey and all was good. Then man said, "Let's isolate that which makes things sweet. We shall discard the vitamin, mineral and enzyme components of food. This will make the sweetnesses sweeter so we can enter them into commerce."
Soon thereafter, people became addicted to the "refined" sweet stuff. They became cranky and unhealthy; their appetite for vice and tendency toward pettiness replaced morality.
It is understood by those who aspire toward political power that a moral people are self-governing and that amoral people demand more government.

U.S. food and drug administrators' curious approval guidelines: Money
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was commissioned to enforce the Safe Food and Drug Act of 1906. For decades people have alleged that the FDA commonly approves for human consumption foods and drugs of questionable safety and denies approval of foods, supplements and drugs proved to be safe.
According to the FDA, its "...mission is to promote and protect the public health by helping safe and effective products reach the market in a timely way, and monitoring products for continued safety after they are in use. Our work is a blending of law and science aimed at protecting consumers."
A lot has happened in the field of biochemistry since the FDA protected the public from real snake oil salesmen and unsanitary food packaging processes. By the year 2000, Americans were spending some $117 billion annually on pharmaceutical drugs. The FDA has approved the use of thousands of drugs that mask the symptoms of chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, anger, depression, heart disease, asthma, Parkinson's, lupus, multiple sclerosis and AIDS just to name a few.
According to FDA Criminal Investigations official Don Liggett, the key to product approval, is money. "...[T]he majority of firms that have drugs approved in the United States are international in scope... fantastically wealthy and able to invest the resources..."
Most drugs that get approved are from large multinational pharmaceutical companies that can spend up to $230 million to achieve approval of their wares. Since many of these drugs were only recently "discovered," it is impossible for them to have undergone scientific studies proving long-term risks or benefits.
If the approval of aspartame is any indication of tests conducted in lieu of FDA approval, we can infer that many have accomplished the expensive feat of drug approval with flawed science.
The proof is in the damage caused by FDA-approved drugs. A congressional committee found that nearly 100,000 people die each year from taking approved drugs per manufacturers' recommendations; American Medical News reported in 2000 that 28 percent of hospital admissions are the result of adverse reactions to prescribed drugs.
There are so many FDA-approved drugs entering the marketplace it is impossible for doctors, or the FDA, to know which drugs will work together to produce therapeutic results and which drugs will recombine to produce toxic and potentially fatal results.

Rumsfeld named G.D. Searle CEO, reverses
Aspartame non-approval tide
By 1976, the G.D. Searle company's campaign to achieve the approval of aspartame was mired in controversy. Amid objections to aspartame approval formally filed by consumer advocate attorney Jim Turner and neuroscientist John Olney, MD, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an investigation into Searle's laboratory practices.
The FDA determined that the aspartame developer's testing procedures were shoddy, producing inaccurate results from manipulated data. The investigators stated in their 1976 report they, "...had never seen anything as bad as Searle's testing."
The FDA report prompted a grand jury investigation led by U.S. Attorney Sam Skinner. Six months later, Skinner resigned from the U.S. attorney's office to take a position at Searle's law firm Sidley & Austin.
By March, 1977, Searle had hired former Illinois congressman and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as its CEO. By Dec., 1977, the statute of limitations had run out on the grand jury investigation and charges against Searle were dropped by the U.S. attorney's office. Though opposition to aspartame approval was increasingly being supported by independent scientific studies, Rumsfeld's political muscle prevailed. On July 15, 1981, in one of his first official acts as FDA commissioner under Ronald Reagan, Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., approved aspartame for dry products.

Physicians, scientists, laypeople question safety of government-approved synthetic sweetener
People have a natural tendency to believe government-approved-products are safe. However, in the case of aspartame, the product is comprised of substances that are not safe and every phase of its journey through the body produces additional substances of known toxicity. This fact has caused increasing numbers to question its safety as an artificial sweetener.
Aspartame breaks down into substances such as methanol, formaldehyde and formic acid all known neurotoxins. Our layperson hypothesis becomes: "Aspartame cannot be safe because it breaks down into substances known to be toxic to the human body."
The next logical step is to locate the science that proves or disproves our new hypothesis.
This is exactly the process that has led thousands of physicians, scientists, attorneys and laypeople to investigate government approval of aspartame. Their investigations reveal a trail of fraud, deceit and power politics not science and public health considerations that led to the approval of aspartame.
" Every known metabolite of aspartame is of marked or questionable toxicity and patently unsafe for human use... The only responsible action would be to immediately take aspartame off the market, fully disclose its toxicities, offer full compensation to the injured public and criminally prosecute anyone who participated in the placement of aspartame on the market that includes those who work so diligently to keep it there as well," explained James Bowen, MD.
On Nov. 2, 1987, Emory University Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics Dr. Louis Elsas testified before Congress. "Aspartame is, in fact, a well-known neurotoxin and teratogen [causes abnormal embryonic development] which, in some undefined dose, will, irreversibly, in the developing child or fetal brain, produce adverse effects... I am particularly angry at this type of advertising that is promoting the sale of a neurotoxin in the childhood age group," Dr. Elsas told the nation's lawmakers assembled on Capitol Hill.
Betty Martini of Mission Possible claims hundreds of peoples' chronic symptoms have reversed once aspartame is removed from their diets.
Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD, author of numerous books, including, "Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills," has declared that aspartame is a toxin like arsenic and cyanide. He has demonstrated that aspartame causes tumors, cancer, seizures and other chronic disorders. He also said it can make people confused, disoriented and is linked to autism and Alzheimer's disease.
Endocrinologist H.J. Roberts, MD, FACP, has studied the case histories of 1,300 aspartame victims over 15 years. Dr. Roberts has declared aspartame disease a "worldwide epidemic."

Worldwide aspartame production, consumption increases 35-fold by 1995

Growth of Worldwide aspartame market (in tons)
U.S Europe Canada Japan RoW* Total
1982 220 30 100 5 15 370
1986 5100 430 120 40 40 5730
1991 8000 1400 400 80 120 10000
1995 10200 1800 500 140 500 13140

*Rest of World
(Source: Exhibit 1, Holland Sweetener Co. v. NutraSweet)Since its 1981 approval for use in dry goods, aspartame has been approved for beverages, processed foods and medical preparations. Today some 7,000 products contain aspartame.

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