One might come to the conclusion that Frances Hunt-Wood, the secretary general of the International Sweeteners Association might have some level of conflict of interest here. Aspartame was always known to be highly toxic, but was approved by the FDA as GRAS (Generally recognized as safe) and the company GD Searle (which was later bought by Monsanto) whose CEO was Donald Rumsfeld made shit tons of money. It was all shady as fuck and the long term safety studies were fraudulent (the rats that developed cancer were just removed from the study). They didn't just start gaslighting people 3 years ago, this shit has been going on for decades. Of course, their response was the same, to label the people bringing the danger to public attention as "conspiracy theorists" and "cranks".