According neurosurgeons, neurologists, internists, clinical psychiatrists, and even a senior toxicologist from the FDA, aspartame is an 'excitotoxin' that literally excites nerve cells to death. In 1974 the entire panel at the FDA voted to prevent Aspartame from going to market but the political pressures of Searle President Donald Rumsfeld led to the head of the FDA overriding the recommendation of the scientific panel and Aspartame was allowed to exist as a food additive.
