There's an article on the front page of the
Sunday New York Times Business section which reports that a cancer researcer in Italy found after a seven-year study that the artificial sweetner
aspartame (Nutra-Sweet or Equal) may be carcinogenic.
The research found that the sweetener was associated with unusually high rates of lymphomas, leukemias and other cancers in rats that had been given doses of it starting at what would be equivalent to four to five 20-ounce bottles of diet soda a day for a 150-pound person. The study, which involved 1,900 laboratory rats and cost $1 million, was conducted at the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences, a nonprofit organization that studies cancer-causing substances; Dr. Soffritti is its scientific director.
The artficial sweetner trade organization disputes the results, of course:
It said Dr. Soffritti's study flew in the face of four earlier cancer studies that aspartame's creator, G. D. Searle & Company, had underwritten and used to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to approve it for human consumption.
Later on, buried deep inside the story, is this interesting fact:
Others have also challenged Searle's studies. Documents from the F.D.A. and records from the Federal Register indicate that, in the years before the F.D.A. approved aspartame, the agency had serious concerns about the accuracy and credibility of Searle's aspartame studies. From 1977 to 1985 -- during much of the approval process -- Searle was headed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is now the secretary of defense; Searle was acquired by Monsanto in 1985.
I don't have a "side" in this dispute. I don't drink beverages with artificial sweetners (except that my wife slips some Splenda (sucralose) into my homemade ice tea when she thinks I'm not paying attention), and I have to wonder whether the study compared the results for aspartme against not only a placebo but against equialent amounts of sugar, to determine if aspartame is more or less carcinogenic than the alternative -- but, still, any mention of Rumsfeld makes me terribly suspicious, and leaves me wondering if he worked his magic with the FDA to help get aspartame approved.
I mean, that is why corporations get guys like Rumsfeld and Cheney as their CEO's, isn't it? Not because of their organizational genius, or their thorough knowledge of the ins and out of the business, but because they can grease the wheels of the Federal bureacracy and get favorable legislation through Congress, right?
Next best thing to owning a politician is to own an ex-politician with great connections.
[Cross posted to unfutz]