Reply #98: How anyone who knows the history of Aspartame's FDA approval...

[Junkdrawer]

would drink the stuff is beyond me....


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Rumsfeld had one pesky problem as Searle's aspartame bully boy; the pointy-headed fellows in lab coats at the FDA (hereafter: scientists) had done some testing of their own, and were convinced that Searle had cooked the books on the safety of aspartame. Ooopsy! Mea culpa, mea culpa pleaded Rumsfeld to the task force that was about to tread on his stock options...how can Searle "mend fences" on this issue?

U.S Attorney Sam Skinner to the rescue! Appointed by the FDA in January 1977, Skinner was to convene a grand jury to decide on whether Searle "willfully and criminally withheld data that cast doubt on the safety of aspartame". Skinner met with Searle's Chicago law firm of Sidney & Austin in February 1977 to conduct an investigation, but left the employ of the U.S government and joined the law firm of...Sidney & Austin? Good career move, Sam! The next U.S. Attorney to conduct the investigation, William Conlon, must have decided that Skinner had the right idea, as he stymied efforts to convene a grand jury as well. Searle had falsified aspartame test data, of that there is no question, including excising tumors from the brains of the rats used in the study. Conlon left the government and joined Sidney & Austin in January of 1979.

Americans and the truth on NutraSweet were held hostage in 1979 and 1980. The American hostages were in Iran, of course, but evidence on aspartame's toxicity lay imprisoned within Searle's reports and the FDA's own findings. Ronald Reagan, elected amidst the morass of the Iranian hostage crisis, included Donald Rumsfeld as part of his transition team. The day after Reagan took office in 1981, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval of aspartame. The new commissioner of the FDA, a Reagan-Rumsfeld appointee named Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., named a five-person Scientific Committee to review the earlier findings. When the vote went 3-2 against approval of aspartame, Hayes did what any fair-minded citizen might do, and appointed a sixth committee member. The committee voted 3-3, leaving Hull to cast the deciding vote, approving aspartame for use in dry products. Aspartame was then approved for use in soft drinks in 1983.

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