Aspartame's Untold Story

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Aspartame's Untold Story

By: Rishi Mehta

Issue date: 11/15/05 Section: Commentary

Article Tools:Page 1 of 1

 

IT'S AN INGREDIENT FOUND IN OVER 5,000 CONSUMER PRODUCTS, INCLUDING GUM,

DIET SODAS, CEREALS, VITAMINS, AND TABLE-TOP SWEETENERS, YET IT IS REPORTED

TO CAUSE OVER 90 DIFFERENT ADVERSE HEALTH AFFECTS. IT'S CONSUMED BY 40

PERCENT OF CHILDREN AND TWO-THIRDS OF THE ADULT POPULATION, YET CAUSES MORE

COMPLAINTS THAN ANY OTHER FOOD ADDITIVE RECEIVED BY THE FOOD AND DRUG

ADMINISTRATION. MARKETED IN NUTRASWEET AND EQUAL, ASPARTAME IS AN INGREDIENT

WELL KNOWN TO CONSUMER AMERICA BUT HAS A CONTROVERSIAL HISTORY NOT SO

WELL-KNOWN.

 

In 1965, aspartame was discovered by a chemist named James Schlatter working

for G.D. Searle & Company. For the next 15 years Searle tried to get the FDA

to approve the ingredient. It wasn't until 1981, when aspartame finally was

approved by the FDA, allowing the product to be used in a variety of daily

food and beverage products. It's a hisory seemingly benign, yet is

inherently anything but. It is the players involved, not the actual

timeline, where cronyism finds its place to lurk. The approval of such a

controversial food additive is marred by the shady practices of the not so

famous Arthur Hayes Hull Jr. and the very famous - if not infamous - Donald

Rumsfeld.

 

During the Gerald Ford adminstration, Rumsfeld acted as the U.S. Secretary

of Defense, only to find himself committing to the private sector once Jimmy

Carter ousted Ford. It was at this point, in 1977, when Rumsfeld became the

chief executive officer of a worldwide pharmaceutical company - G.D. Searle

& Company. It's the same company which for years found themselves unable to

get an FDA approval for aspartame, only to receive approval six months after

Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President of the United States.

 

So is it exactly " shady " that Rumsfeld couldn't get FDA approval until

Reagan became president? Did it really pose a conflict of interest, when

Reagan appointed Rumsfeld as his Special Envoy to the Middle East, while

Rumsfeld was still in charge of Searle and lobbying for FDA approval of

aspartame? A resounding yes, and yes for more than just the Reagan-Rumsfeld

connection.

 

In 1981, after over 15 years of FDA disapproval of aspartame, Rumsfeld said

in a Searle sales meeting that he will use " political rather than scientific

means " to finally get FDA approval. Only 20 days later, Reagan was sworn in

as 40th President of the United States, appointing Rumfeld as Special Envoy

to the Middle East and Arthur Hayes Hull Jr. - a friend of Rumsfeld's - to

FDA commissioner. Within one day, Rumsfeld and Searle reapplied to Hull's

FDA for approval of aspartame. A few months later Hayes appointed a

five-member committee to review whether or not Aspartame should be approved.

When it became apparent there would be a 3-2 decision against approval of

the substance, Hull appointed a sixth person. Once the vote became

deadlocked, Hayes took it upon himself to make the tie-breaking vote,

allowing Aspartame to receive FDA approval. Only three months later, Hayes

resigned under controversy only to shortly thereafter take a senior position

with Burston-Marsteller - a company which was the public relations firm for

Rumsfeld's Searle.

 

To many, a conflict of interest of this magnitude is a common practice

throughout the corrupt history of American politics, making the aspartame

story nothing of significance. This would certainly be the case if the

controversy stopped at the personal gain Rumsfeld and Hayes achieved through

an inherent conflict of interest. Unfortunately, millions of consumers have

suffered because aspartame did not go through the " normal " procedures for

FDA approval.

 

Initially, the FDA didn't approve aspartame for years because it was thought

to cause brain tumors. In 1980, after more research was done, the FDA voted

against approval of the product because there were many " unanswered

questions about its potential " to be a carcinogen. In 1981, the three

members of Hayes' committee who voted against FDA approval noted that

" Searle's tests were unreliable and not adequate to determine the safety of

aspartame. " To this date, studies have shown that more research is needed to

completely eliminate the question of whether or not aspartame is connected

to brain lesions, brain tumuors and lymphoma. While some recent research

have deemed aspartame as safe, other research, such as the one conducted

recently in Italy by the European Ramazzini Foundation, have found that

aspartme caused kidney cancer in rats. Some would argue that the the

potential danger of aspartme is even admitted by our government as it was

revealed in 1987 that the Pentagon once considered it to be a prospective

biochemical-warfare weapon.

 

If anything, aspartame needed further research and still does. It did not

need to be rushed into FDA approval. Had Rumsfeld not been the president of

Searle, and had Reagan not appointed Hayes to the FDA, aspartame could still

very well be going through a variety of tests to measure its safety. In the

end it could very well be that aspartame is not as dangerous as its critics

have made it seem, but until this becomes the definitive truth, consumers

should not be made to believe such a product is truly safe. Consumers would

never have been put in potential risk if the conflict of interest Rumsfeld

and Hayes posed never occurred.

 

Unfortunately for the public, Rumsfeld's shady connections do not end with

the aspartame story. Indeed, even today Rumsfeld's private and public

careers have crossed paths, exploiting Americans and the world for personal

wealth. Lost in the doomsday predictions of the avian flu is the Rumsfeld

connection. It's a connection which details his key role in the eerily

similar 1976 swine flu scare as well as the current avian flu hysteria.