[PEN-L:33606] Rumsfeld the artificial sweet guy...

["ken hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thought this was interesting. It is from

http://aspartamekills.com/mpvalley/

The website is a mixture of fact fiction and some goofy rhetoric. Did you know that the Gulf War Syndrome is a result of drinking warm diet pop?

Cheers, Ken Hanly

 

On June 1, 1977, Donald Rumsfeld became Chairman and CEO of G.D. Searle.   Rumsfeld, straight out the White House as Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense and before that his Chief of Staff, was a heavy gun for Searle to secure FDA approval of aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet).  A hard-right Republican who served four terms in Congress (1962-69), Rumsfeld voted against food stamps, Medicare and anti-poverty funds. Rumsfeld's political ideology encompasses the stockpiling of chemical weapons, downsizing the Federal government, and eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In a 1995 speech to the Heartland Institute, Rumsfeld told his audience, "At G.D Searle, we reduced the centralized corporate activities to about 20 percent of their original size, divested businesses, sold assets and moved the stock from about $12 a share to $50-$60 a share."

Testimony in the US Senate records show that G.D. Searle suffered a $28 million dollar loss in 1984, sold off 30 subsidiaries, and faced a lawsuit filed by 780 women claiming that Searle's intrauterine device caused them pelvic inflammatory disease.

For Rumsfeld's part he was paid, between 1979 and 1984, 2 million dollars in salary and 1.5 million in bonuses.