The Case against Aspartame

I guess I have been a little bit reluctant to enter into the conversation surrounding Aspartame. This is mostly, because there is a very significant article on Snopes that mostly discounts all the articles written claiming there to be a significant Health Risk associated with Aspartame usage. That is, until I read the original article supposedly written by a non existant person who attended and lectured at a non-existant conference. Makes it look pretty much like scare tactics, as usual. Unfortunately, I began to smell a snake in the grass when I read that Donald Rumsfeld might be involved in a scheme to push the approval through the FDA in the early days of the Reagan presidency. As a matter of fact, GD Searle, the inventor of the original product re-submitted his request for approval the day after Reagan took office. This raised the hairs on the back of my head and I began to have serious suspicions of a government conspiracy at the very highest levels, much as we were pushed into the war in Iraq, by that same Donald Rumsfeld in a later Republican administration. Sure enough, I quickly learned the controversy goes much deeper than Snopes seems to have discovered. It makes you wonder if Barbara and David Mikkelson don't themselves own stock in Monsanto. I was especially concerned after discovering that Monsanto had bought GD Searle in 1985 for 2.7 billion dollars. I knew Monsanto had a history of manipulating their friends in Congress and the white House. Therefore, in my thinking, they must all be guilty as charged. Then when the U.S. Supreme Court, headed by Conservative, Clarence Thomas, who is a former attorney for Monsanto, refused to hear arguments by Consumer Groups that the FDA did not follow proper procedures in approving Aspartame, I was positive there was government and political manipulation going on here.

It was not until 1995 that Consumer activist Betty Martini managed to force the FDA to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act that supplied a list of all the adverse effects reported to the FDA by consumers associated with their Aspartame ingestion. The list is quite startling and includes four deaths and more than 90 unique symptoms, a majority of which are connected to impaired neurological function. They include: headache; dizziness or problems with balance; mood change; vomiting and nausea; seizures and convulsions; memory loss; tremors; muscle weakness; abdominal pains and cramps; change in vision; diarrhoea; fatigue and weakness; skin rashes; deteriorating vision; joint and musculoskeletal pain.

For a complete time-table in the history of Aspartame, visit the main link supplied in the title of this BLOG. I will be making further contributions to this BLOG, or modifying the existing content, in the coming days, as I further investigate the claims both pro and con.