That article has a lot of fear mongering about artificial sweeteners and then at the bottom an ad for "certifiedorganicevaporatedcanejuice.com". Maybe it's not the most objective source of information?
this makes it very hard for me to believe in the corruption argument, no one individual has the power or money to do something on that scale. maybe its a coordinated effort, but such arguments strain credibility. even if we assume corruption, it is not relevant to the safety discussion if we have piles of evidence that something is only dangerous in well understood cases.
on the other hand, we will never really know for sure, and we don't even have a complete picture until enough people have been consuming it for long enough 'in the wild'... but the same is true about anything discovered recently.
and of course, the individual case you point out is shocking regardless as to the safety of aspartame.
Aspartame is 50 years old now. Any researcher that showed a clear damaging effect would instantly be set for life, no? I know that isn't strong evidence, but it's some evidence.
I don't know what it is about artificial sweeteners in general, but I think people hate the idea of getting something for free, that you can literally enjoy a sweet dessert without paying for it in calories.
In SF, it's obnoxious, to the point of places not even carrying sucralose or aspartame, only <shudder>, Stevia. Or people saying, with a straight face, "Yep, our tea has real sugar, so it's far better for you."
For those who struggle to parse without spaces :)