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The 13th Annual Kenneth Owler Smith Symposium features a discussion with Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, the former tobacco company whistleblower featured in the Academy Award-winning film, The Insider.
A native New Yorker, Dr. Wigand was born in New York City but now calls Charleston, South Carolina home. He earned academic degrees with distinction from the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and more recently obtained a Masters Degree in Secondary Education (MAT) from the University of Louisville.
Wigand taught Japanese and Science (Biology, Chemistry and Physical Sciences) at duPont Manual High School, a national school of academic excellence, in Louisville, Kentucky for three years and received national recognition for his teaching skills when he was awarded the Sallie Mae "FIRST CLASS TEACHER of the YEAR" award in 1996. He was one of 51 teachers recognized nationwide.
Wigand has always been a teacher, but not always in the classroom. He held senior management positions with a number of leading health care companies, including Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, and then served as Vice President for Research and Development for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation from December 1988 to March 1993. After his separation from Brown & Williamson, Wigand cooperated with governmental agencies investigating the tobacco industry. Dr. Kessler, the former Commissioner of the FDA, has acknowledged that Wigand's assistance was central to the FDA's investigation into the role and effect of nicotine in tobacco products.
When Wigand joined the upper echelon of the tobacco industry in the late 1980's, he hoped to create a safer cigarette for smokers around the world. Ten years later, he emerged from his experience a hero -- not because he created a safer product, but because, along the way, he just happened to become the highest-ranking executive to go public with what he knew in the history of the tobacco industry. Throughout his harrowing ordeal, however, Wigand was mostly vilified a liar; the hero part has only come lately. To Vanity Fair magazine, he was "The Man Who Knew Too Much." The Walt Disney Company -- whose movie about his travails was released in November 1999 -- dubbed him The Insider. His odyssey from tobacco top-brass turncoat has made him the subject of documentaries and the object of death threats. Wigand's revelations triggered one of the most inglorious moments in the history of <>60 Minutes, when CBS initially shelved an interview with him, fearing a lawsuit from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation.
- Nicole Peradotto, The Buffalo Physician, Volume 34, # 3
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