For a long duration, the major tobacco companies concealed the truth about the calamitous effects of smoking. Adding to that, some of the companies also instilled extra nicotine and a variety of other chemicals into the tobacco to increase its addictivity. The companies, like Brown & Williamson, didn't impart these activities to the government or to their customers (The Insider).
A film released in 1999, The Insider, tells the story of two whistleblowers. The first whistleblower who has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, was an upper-rank Brown & Williamson executive. Brown & Williamson at that time declined that nicotine was, in any way, addictive. They also stated that the research behind tobaccos detrimental effects were hoaxes and that tobacco didn’t impair health. A little later in 1995, Dr. Wigand became the first tobacco company employ to provide supporting evidence that the tobacco industries knew for decades that smoking caused cancer to some degree and that tobacco was very addictive because of the high nicotine …show more content…
Bergman had made a promised with Dr. Wigand, that if he stood up, 60 Minutes would interview him. When CBS decided to remove Wigand's story before it aired, Bergman uncovered that the cause was that there was a lawsuit launched by the tobacco industry against the network. The network became a cowardice under all of the stress, theorizing that airing the interview would welcome a multimillion-dollar lawsuit from Brown & Williamson and danger its pending sale to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. So like Wigand, Bergman became a mutineer to force CBS into running the segment (The Insider). Here’s a quote from Bergman during this crisis, "I told them that I was going to make sure the story got out . . . I didn't tell them what I was going to do or how I was going to do it" (Whistle-blower Lowell Bergman: an insider's view of '60
A film released in 1999, The Insider, tells the story of two whistleblowers. The first whistleblower who has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, was an upper-rank Brown & Williamson executive. Brown & Williamson at that time declined that nicotine was, in any way, addictive. They also stated that the research behind tobaccos detrimental effects were hoaxes and that tobacco didn’t impair health. A little later in 1995, Dr. Wigand became the first tobacco company employ to provide supporting evidence that the tobacco industries knew for decades that smoking caused cancer to some degree and that tobacco was very addictive because of the high nicotine …show more content…
Bergman had made a promised with Dr. Wigand, that if he stood up, 60 Minutes would interview him. When CBS decided to remove Wigand's story before it aired, Bergman uncovered that the cause was that there was a lawsuit launched by the tobacco industry against the network. The network became a cowardice under all of the stress, theorizing that airing the interview would welcome a multimillion-dollar lawsuit from Brown & Williamson and danger its pending sale to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. So like Wigand, Bergman became a mutineer to force CBS into running the segment (The Insider). Here’s a quote from Bergman during this crisis, "I told them that I was going to make sure the story got out . . . I didn't tell them what I was going to do or how I was going to do it" (Whistle-blower Lowell Bergman: an insider's view of '60