People concerned about the health effects of sugar had two alternatives in the mid 1960s, saccharin and cyclamates. Saccharin, the older of the two, is intensely sweet but may leave a bitter aftertaste. Cyclamates, the other substitute, are also intensely sweet — thirty times as sweet as sugar — and they leave no aftertaste. The positive qualities cannot outweigh the negative, however. Cyclamates can kill.

Cyclamate Controversy.

Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, a researcher at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), experimented with chicken embryos and cyclamates in 1966. She found that the chemical caused birth defects in 15 percent of the chicks exposed. She also showed that cyclamates caused chromosome breaks in rats which were fed high doses of the substance and cancer in other animals. In metabolizing the cyclamates many people's bodies formed cyclohexylamines, breakdown products known to cause bladder cancer in rats...