wow, I would love to read the rest of that article, can you provide a link?
That these sweeteners were invented by chemists has long made them suspect. Saccharin was listed as an "anticipated human carcinogen" in 1981, sucralose has been shown to weakly mutate genes in test tubes, and aspartame has triggered fears about everything from autism to multiple sclerosis. Still, no concerns have held up under scrutiny. Food additives have to meet much higher standards than drugs, Walters points out, because their drawbacks aren't weighed against their medical benefits.
Aspartame, for instance, has been studied more than any other substance in FDA history, yet it has consistently been declared safe. Sucralose has shown no carcinogenic effects in animals, even at high doses. And saccharin was rehabilitated as a safe additive in 1997, when scientists found that rats used in earlier studies had a predisposition to cancer unrelated to the sweetener.
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/aug/chemistry-of-artificial-sweeteners