Yes we can thank our FDA and Donald Rumsfeld for our government's acceptance of aspartame. Good thing the dangerous plant stevia was banned until 2008 and we had the safe aspartame, thanks Rumsfeld!

There are still studies that find fault with aspartame, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20886530, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805418 But hey, you can trust cancer.gov if you want. I don't touch the stuff, it tastes so disgusting anyway.