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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Should IRESSA Be Pulled Off the Market?; What If Nixon Survived Watergate?

Aired June 03, 2005 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, again.
Imagine this. Two people have identical illnesses, two cases of cancer, for example, the same cancers in same places for both. Now, imagine there's a drug that cures one of those people but not the other. Imagine that that drug, the one that cured the one person, might well come off the market because it didn't cure the other. That curing one person wasn't enough.

That greatly simplified -- and we do mean greatly -- is where we begin tonight. The story of a patient, a cancer, a drug and the complicated business of what means success.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Kate Robbins is alive today and there is nothing simple about that fact.

Almost 3 and-a-half years ago, she learned she had lung cancer, a cancer that had spread to her brain.

KATE ROBBINS, CANCER SURVIVOR: I was stunned. And deep sadness. I was just in panic, actually -- in disbelief. I was 44-years-old. I had a 9 and 11-year-old children. And my husband and I just could not believe what was happening.

BROWN: The diagnosis a shock, because Robbins had never smoked.

The first oncologist she saw said she could expect to live nine months. Nearly two-thirds of people diagnosed with advanced lung cancer die within a year, fewer than 2 percent live five years. Kate Robbins decided to ignore statistics.

ROBBINS: What I resolved was that I wanted to be very aggressive about my treatment. Really at that time, what I was -- I wasn't thinking cure as much as I was thinking of extending my time with my family.

BROWN: At Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Robbins found an ally in Dr. Tom Lynch, the head of thoracic oncology.

Well, We knew in Kate's situation early on that the cancer had spread. And we knew that this was going to be something which was going to be very challenging. ROBBINS: They ultimately said that no one holds the answer to survival rates. And that, you know, we'll plow ahead and see where it brings us.

BROWN: Robbins began a full force attack on her cancer. The radiation, surgery, multiple rounds of chemotherapy. Her blood counts dropped, her hair fell out. She lost 30 pounds, but the cancer continued to spread.

ROBBINS: We get this crushing blow. Dr. Lynch came in to my hospital room. He was wonderful. He said you know, I -- it's difficult to know what to say to a patient at this stage. And yet, he said, I've seen so many different patients pull through in ways that, you know, you just can't imagine will happen. And so he said, you know, don't lose hope.

LYNCH: I think one of the most important things you can tell a patient at that point is that you are going to do everything you can to give them the best chance of surviving this cancer. And you're not going to give up on them. And you're going to keep looking for options that are going help them with that tumor.

ROBBINS: I hadn't given up hope, but it was very difficult to continue to keep propping yourself up emotionally.

BROWN: Robbins began to face the fact that she might not see her children grow up.

ROBBINS: I started a journal for each of them. And would basically just write impressions of that day with them. You know, what they wore going to school, or how I would walk up to the bus stop with them and watch them get on the bus and wave.

It was very hard. And yet I felt it was important, because I was able to share -- share things that I couldn't verbalize to them. Because I wanted to be strong, and I didn't want to frighten them with the diagnosis any more than they needed to be.

BROWN: Eight months after her diagnosis, Robbins was almost out of options, almost. There was one other treatment to try, an experimental drug called IRESSA, a drug designed to target an enzyme cancer cells require to grow.

LYNCH: If you can block the enzyme, you can prevent that signal from telling the cell to grow.

BROWN: The way IRESSA was supposed to work was unique and also unproven. Robbins enrolled in a clinical trial and put her hope in the small red pills.

ROBBINS: I started taking once a day an IRESSA pill. It was amazing to me that this one little pill was going to do anything, you know, to help my situation.

LYNCH: You're always nervous, both the doctor and the patient are incredibly nervous when you look at a scan report and try to figure out are we making progress against this?

BROWN: It was now almost a year after Kate Robbins learned she had stage 4 lung cancer. Now she was about to learn if the only treatment left to save her life was working.

ROBBINS: He said, there's been no added tumors. And no additional growth. And this was wonderful, because everything was blooming at such a rapid rate.

BROWN: On Robbins' next visit, the news was even better. Some of the smallest tumors had disappeared. The largest appeared to be shrinking.

ROBBINS: Overwhelming joy. It meant I was going to have more time. And it meant that I would be able to see my children's birthdays in April. It meant that I would probably see another spring and summer.

LYNCH: To see that scan, to see the shrinkage was remarkable.

ROBBINS: They didn't know it at the time, but Robbins, like a fraction of lung cancer patients, has a genetic mutation that is thought to make their tumors vulnerable to drugs like IRESSA. And Robbins' next visit, the unimaginable.

LYNCH: So this was a C.A.T. scan that was taken right before we started IRESSA. And just from looking at this, you can see there are at least 10 to 14 different areas of cancer.

And this is her most recent C.A.T. scan. You can see really complete disappearance and a virtually normal appearing liver. In fact, it is a normal appearing liver on CT Scan.

BROWN: Robbins scans were entirely clear.

ROBBINS: You almost couldn't believe that you were looking at the same person's scan. And my husband Mark and I -- I mean, I just cried. You know, you're on the edge of the darkest days that you could ever imagine. And the sun comes out.

LYNCH: This is probably something seen in only a handful of patients, maybe 5 percent of the patients who get IRESSA. What's even rarer about it is the duration of benefit and how long she's been tumor-free.

ROBBINS: Two years later, Robbins' scans remain clear. She has her old life back, though nothing is quite the same.

ROBBINS: I know before my cancer diagnosis, it was so sad for me to have my children grow up. Each birthday, I was somewhat wistful that their childhood, they were growing so fast. And now I celebrate it, because I know how precious it is and how close I came to missing out.

LYNCH: I think her response is as good as it gets. And I've had a number of patients -- I've probably will 20, 25 patients over the past four years that I felt have had these kind of dramatically responses.

BROWN: 25 patients out of the hundreds he has treated, 25. Robbins knows she's the rare exception.

ROBBINS: No one's even used the word remission for me. Partly because we're in uncharted waters.

BROWN: Most patients who respond to IRESSA eventually develop a resistance to the drug. When that might happen for any one patient is impossible to predict. And now, another unknown as well, the possibility that IRESSA may be taken off the market.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Months after Kate Robbins began taking the drug, the FDA approved it based on studies showing that it shrank tumors in about 10 percent of patients. But the approval came with a catch, the company that makes IRESSA, AstraZeneca, would have to prove later in large clinical trials that it actually helps lung cancer patients live longer. And so far those trials have failed.

And today, IRESSA is no longer the only option, though it still may be the best option for patients like Kate Robbins.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBBINS: IRESSA, essentially, along with, I think, prayer and faith has saved my life. It's allowed me to be a mother to my children.

BROWN (voice-over): Kate Robbins might seem to be living proof, dramatic proof of the effectiveness of the anti-cancer drug IRESSA. But that's not how science works. Diagnosed more than three years ago with advanced lung cancer, today Robbins shows no evidence of the disease. Her tumors have apparently disappeared.

And now the drug she credits with saving her life is under fire.

DR. PETER LURIE, PUBLIC CITIZEN: I wouldn't want my patient on it, especially when I know that there are other drugs that have positive mortality data. The real point is that the drug needs to work.

BROWN: Dr. Peter Lurie is the deputy director of health research for Public Citizen, a group that wants IRESSA taken off the market.

It all comes down to proof, he says. IRESSA's manufacturer has never proved in large clinical trials that the drug actually helps lung cancer patients live longer.

LURIE: The evidence for response with this drug is actually very limited.

BROWN: In a statement, AstraZeneca, the company that makes IRESSA, told CNN: "Clearly, many patients are benefiting from IRESSA, some with durable responses." Kate Robbins is one of those patients. But in the world of science, she is one person; she is not a scientific study. When she began taking the IRESSA more than two years ago, there were no other treatments for advanced lung cancer. Since then a similar drug, Tarceva, has become the drug of choice when chemotherapy and radiation fail.

Dr. Tom Lynch, Kate Robbins' oncologist, says, if she were diagnosed today he would prescribe Tarceva, not IRESSA.

DR. TOM LYNCH, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL: Tarceva replaced IRESSA. It's better for patients. It's a terrific thing. IRESSA didn't fail; Tarceva just came along and was a little bit better.

BROWN: Better because Tarceva has proved in large clinical trials that it helps lung cancer patients live longer. And that is part of the problem with keeping IRESSA on the market according to Public Citizen.

DR. PETER LURIE, PUBLIC CITIZEN: There are currently about 300 patients a week who are getting new prescriptions for IRESSA. And a big concern is diverting patients from effective drugs to ones that have not been proven to be effective.

BROWN: AstraZeneca told CNN it believes most of those new prescriptions are being filled for patients already taking IRESSA.

Dr. Paul Bunn, a lung cancer expert and past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists, says he believes most doctors are now prescribing Tarceva instead of IRESSA.

DR. PAUL BUNN, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO CANCER CENTER: Medical oncologists are extremely compulsive, and they pay tremendous attention to the literature and to the results of clinical trials. And they will do what they feel is best for their patients.

BROWN: Dr. Bunn says that the length of survival is only one measure of a drug's effectiveness.

BUNN: Patients with lung cancer have a lot of symptoms from their disease. Almost all patients have cough; almost all patients have pain. Majority have shortness of breath. About 40 percent of unselected patients with advanced lung cancer will have symptom benefit from IRESSA or Tarceva.

BROWN: Recently researchers have discovered genetic mutations that may explain why some patients respond to IRESSA and Tarceva.

Kate Robbins has one of those mutations. Her cancer doctor says that studying IRESSA in patients who have the mutations could change the research scorecard.

LYNCH: I think if you looked at it in a more targeted selective group, you would find that IRESSA did benefit patients, some patients with lung cancer.

BROWN: He also says not every patient can tolerate Tarceva.

LYNCH: I think Tarceva is a much more potent drug than IRESSA is. And for many of my patients who were on IRESSA, I was able to switch them to Tarceva, but for others I wasn't.

BROWN: Doctors Lynch and Bunn have both consulted for the two companies that make IRESSA and Tarceva. They treat hundreds of lung cancer patients each year, and both men believe that IRESSA should stay on the market.

LYNCH: I think one has to remember, you're dealing with a disease where patients have a uniform fatal prognosis without these drugs. And I think that these drugs are incredibly important in offering hope to patients.

BUNN: When the drug works, it makes a tremendous difference. Patients also appreciate the fact that they don't lose their hair, they don't have nausea, vomiting, and all the other standard side effects of regular chemotherapy.

KATE ROBBINS, LUNG CANCER SURVIVOR: It's scary and frightening to think that there could ever be a possible time that IRESSA might not be available to me, you know, or to anyone else that's having any sort of response with it.

BROWN: If IRESSA were taken off the market, Public Citizen says patients already taking it, like Robbins, would still have access to it as an experimental drug. AstraZeneca told CNN that it is in fact "committed to maintaining access to IRESSA for patients who may benefit, and we believe removal from the market is unnecessary while further data are collected."

There's nothing simple about the story of IRESSA. By the standards of science, it's a drug that so far has missed its mark. But at the same time, Kate Robbins is very much alive.

ROBBINS: It's been a remarkable journey that continues. And so I'm just phenomenally grateful for this blessing.

BROWN: The FDA says it's reviewing all of the data on IRESSA. A decision could come some time this summer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In just a bit on the program, what if Watergate did not happen? How would the country be different today?

But first, near a quarter past the hour, Erica Hill is in Atlanta tonight and has the headlines. Erica, good to see you.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: And you as well, Aaron. Good evening.

Tonight, the Pentagon has released details of instances where military guards at Guantanamo Bay mishandled copies of prisoners' Korans. An investigation has determined one guard deliberately kicked a Koran; another stepped on one. Water balloons caused some copies to get wet. Prison guard's urine came through an air vent, splashing a prisoner and his Koran. And an obscenity was written inside another. Investigators say they found evidence that detainees, not guards, tried to flush a Koran down a toilet.

A Virgin Atlantic flight from London to New York was diverted to Canada today, after the jet sent out a false alarm that it was being hijacked. Now, it appears to be a case of equipment malfunction. The plane was inspected and then did proceed to New York.

Michael Jackson's future now in the hands of the jurors. They began deliberations this afternoon. No verdict was reached. So they will resume on Monday morning.

Jackson was in court today, but will remain at his ranch until a decision is reached.

And that is the latest from HEADLINE NEWS at this hour. Aaron, back over to you.

BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in about a half an hour. More coming up from us in the hour ahead. Tough choices on medical, ethical and the moral frontier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN (voice-over): Two families, two choices.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I didn't want to be in heaven and have the spirit or the face of this child come up to me and say, mommy, why wasn't I important enough?

PAMELA MADSEN, DONATED EMBRYOS: Those embryos can help somebody else's baby walk. Those embryos can help some poor child suffering with diabetes.

BROWN: The human faces in the battle over stem cells, frozen embryos and life.

Which brings us to a larger question. From a sheep to a stem cell, how far have we come and where are we going?

RICHARD NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: People have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.

BROWN: But crook or not, what if he had survived Watergate? What the world today might look like without Deep Throat back then.

No need to speculate about this, because this is NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We exaggerate but only a bit in saying that recent American history -- politics, medicine, you name it -- could be written in just one word: Abortion.

The latest episode involves as many as 400,000 frozen embryos in fertility clinics around the country. Ordinarily, they would be thrown out. But for doctors who want to use them to cure disease, and others who consider them morally no different from a grown person. They are pushing for embryo adoption.

In Kentucky, for instance, pushing for a law to make the creation of any embryo not implanted in a womb a felony.

Nationwide, neither the law nor the debate is close to being settled. So instead of law, we are faced simply with choices. Here's CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These four children, Savannah and Marshall Gray (ph), Tyler and Spencer Madsen all began life in a Petri dish -- the products of in vitro fertilization. And the dilemma their parents faced is now at the heart of the national debate over stem cells.

In the process of conceiving their children, the Madsens and the Grays had unused embryos that were sitting in freezers. The two made very different choices about what to do with them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Suddenly in the same instant that I realized that I was pregnant with our fourth child, in the same exact instant, the thought went through my mind of, oh, my goodness, what are we going to do with 23 embryos?

COHEN: The Grays donated them to an infertile couple.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I didn't want to be in heaven and have this spirit or the face of this child come up to me and say, mommy, why wasn't I important enough?

COHEN: But the Madsens donated their unused embryos to stem cell researchers.

PAMELA MADSEN, DONATED EMBRYOS: Those embryos could help somebody else's baby walk. Those embryos could help some poor child suffering with diabetes.

COHEN: The embryos are a rich source for stem cells, which seem to hold promise for treating various diseases.

But for the Grays, the embryos are unborn babies.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is a very real picture for us, knowing that these embryos are the joining of a man and a woman.

COHEN: Pamela Madsen supports the concept of embryo adoption, but couldn't stand the thought of having her own biological children being raised by someone else, far away from her. MADSEN: I wasn't the kind of mother that could let go in that way, wondering about a baby out there in the world, maybe needing me in some way.

COHEN: Two women, two very different choices. Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Not so long ago the choice simply wasn't available. We spent a good deal of the week looking back on 25 years since this network first went on the air. Tonight, a quarter of a century, and the frontiers of medicine.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): We certainly know more about how the body works than ever before. What was barely imagined in 1980 has now been achieved: The decoding of the human genetic map. Humbling to learn that so few genes, only about 15 percent, separate men from mice or sheep.

We can do more, too. Remember Dolly? Cloning mammals from a single cell that paved the way for creating human embryos and bitter and difficult ethical debates.

We innovate more. Nuclear medicine, new in 25 years.

But this isn't. Cancer, in many ways, remains a frustratingly intractable foe. Despite progress in breast, colon and cervical cancers, those in the trenches are realistic about that elusive cure.

DR. LEONARDO SALTZ, MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER: I don't believe you're going to wake up one morning and see a banner headline that cancer has been cured. I think what you are going to continue to see is these important small steps that over time are going to add up to covering quite a lot of distance.

BROWN: The distance from heartbreak to hope, logged in the battle against AIDS. A few sick men with odd symptoms in 1981 proved the vanguard of an epidemic that would kill millions. By the mid- '90s, new drugs, for those who could afford them, made AIDS less deadly, more manageable.

DR. JERRY AVORN, AUTHOR, POWERFUL MEDICINE: The development of treatments for AIDS has been one of the miracles of the last 25 years. Now it is becoming, thanks to some of the wonderful medications that we have, a chronic illness that gets managed, just as if we manage other chronic illnesses. And that's a transformation that is just unprecedented.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One pill, 24 hours.

BROWN: But also unprecedented, the more than $4 billion spent by drug companies annually to market medicines directly to consumers, a change the FDA allowed only eight years ago. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ask your doctor if Lipitor is right for you.

BROWN: Since 1980, U.S. drug sales have tripled. The $250 billion industry has been the nation's most profitable for nearly all of the last 10 years.

AVORN: We're paying way more than any other country per capita for our drugs, and yet most of that is going for marketing promotion and administration and shareholder profit, and only about 11 cents on the dollar is actually going back into research. And that's not a very good return on investment.

BROWN: None of the 10 best-selling drugs today existed in 1980, but only one is entirely new. The others, slightly altered versions of older formulas, because innovation is slow-going and costly.

CHARLES DELISI, DEAN EMERITUS, BOSTON UNIV.: So far from the human genome project, there's no single major discovery or drug that one can identify.

BROWN: The 600 or so clinical trials in gene therapy have yet to produce a major breakthrough. But in an era of accelerated change, history runs by its own clock, as Charles Delisi, often called the father of the human genome project, reminds us.

DELISI: In the context and the scale of 300 years, a few decades is a very short time. We just haven't been at it long enough. But the promise is we're in the midst of a revolution, that is for sure.

BROWN: We can only imagine where that revolution might take us in the next 25 years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Just ahead on the program, what if? What if Watergate had not happened? What if President Nixon did not resign? What might the country look like today?

And later, there are Serbians who don't believe atrocities were committed against the Bosnian Muslims. We'll show you the videotape that makes it impossible to ignore.

We'll take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Mostly around here we concern ourselves with what is, not what if. But the events of this week have made us wonder some. When Mark Felt revealed himself as Watergate's Deep Throat, the debate over the correctness of his actions ensued.

So what if he hadn't talked to those two reporters? What if all things that became Watergate went undiscovered? What if history didn't unfold the way it did? What if?

Here's our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): August 9, 1974, Watergate's final chapter. As the first president in American history to resign -- hold it, hold it. Imagine this never happened. Imagine that Nixon or John Mitchell or somebody had said, a burglary, at Democratic headquarters? Are you nuts?

Or suppose there had been no Deep Throat or any other source to guide Woodward and Bernstein down the money trail? Or that we'd never learned about those tapes?

Imagine, in other words, that Richard Nixon had served out his second term and done it without the cloud of scandal.

(on camera) The what-ifs are fascinating. They suggest, in fact, that everything from our politics to our journalism to our national culture might have been very, very different.

(voice-over) Start with our politics.

SPIRO AGNEW, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: I had not resign...

GREENFIELD: Vice President Agnew still would have been forced out of office in the fall of 1973. His misdeeds had to do with bribes, not Watergate.

But without Watergate, Nixon would not have had to reach out to Congress by picking House Republican leader Gerald Ford. He might well, have turned to one of his personal favorites, Democrat turned Republican John Connolly. And that, in turn, would have made Connolly a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 1976.

Also without Watergate, the appeal of a Washington outsider like, say, California Governor Ronald Reagan, might have been less compelling. And it's just possible that conservatism's most articulate spokesman might never have had a real shot at national office.

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president.

GREENFIELD: And speaking of outsiders, would a peanut farmer turned governor like Jimmy Carter, who boasted of his lack of Washington experience, really been a likely Democratic presidential nominee? Or would a Washington face, Senator Scoop Jackson, Congressman Mo Udall, even former vice president, Hubert Humphrey, have been more likely?

And a likely Democratic presidential nominee?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Opening the mail of American citizens for over...

GREENFIELD: What about public policy? After Nixon quit, Congress asserted its power over an imperial presidency and essentially refused to fund the Vietnam War any longer.

In 1975, the communist north conquered the south, and the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. To this day some conservatives argue that, had Nixon not left, these events and the subsequent genocide in Cambodia might never have happened.

Another question: without the loss of Vietnam, would later enemies of the United States have come to believe that this nuclear superpower was a paper tiger which could be successfully attacked?

Other what-ifs. Would American journalism have developed quite as big an appetite for the political scandal? Would every political controversy have been labeled as another "gate"?

And would the press and the public have developed so strong a sense that government itself was a suspect institution? In 1964, one major survey showed more than three-fourths of Americans trusted the government to do what is right almost all or most of the time. A decade later a little more than a third did.

(on camera) Which leads to this final what if: without Watergate, which led to big Democratic gains in the Congress and to a Democratic White House takeover in '76, would the distrust in government grown so great that most Americans now accept the central conservative premise that government is often not the solution but the problem?

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What if? And so Watergate is part of our history. And up next on the program, our conversation with a former top aide to President Nixon, who went to prison for his role in the scandal. How Watergate changed the life of Jeb Magruder. A break first. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: When Jeb Magruder was sentenced to prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up, he had this to say. "I am confident," he said, "that this country will survive its Watergates and its Jeb Magruders." We did. And as it turns out, so did he.

It was a young Jeb Magruder along with a lot of other young and talented people who went to jail back then. It was a different Jeb Magruder who emerged and who we talked with earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Are you surprised that there has been, this week, this debate over whether Deep Throat was -- and because of the way debates tend to go in the country these days, it's almost been cast as either this great hero or this great villain?

JEB STEWART MAGRUDER, FORMER NIXON AIDE: Well, I wouldn't put him in either category. My guess is he, for whatever reasons, one reason was he was passed over for director of the FBI. And another reason was that he probably decided that what he knew was going on was wrong.

And he couldn't go through the chain of command, which I think somebody, Pat Buchanan, or someone said that. You know, he was stuck. He couldn't have gone through us. We certainly wouldn't have been happy if he'd us about what we were doing.

BROWN: In every situation, there's a moment, I think. What was the moment where you knew for Jeb Magruder this was going down? This was bad?

MAGRUDER: Well, I knew it when I -- well, there were two -- well, I knew it -- actually, when I got the phone call from Liddy on that Saturday morning after the break-in, Mitchell and I were in Los Angeles for a campaign event.

That moment I thought, this probably will go down the wrong way. Then later, you know, I thought, well, maybe we'll make it out of this. But when I knew McCord had sent his letter to Judge Sirica, then I knew that it was over, because Dean and I had already testified under oath. And when he named Dean and I, I knew that was the beginning of the end.

BROWN: You figured you could withstand whatever the press was doing, but you probably couldn't withstand what Judge Sirica was doing?

MAGRUDER: When I was testifying at Liddy and Hunt and McCord's trial, I remember looking at Sirica myself and saying to myself, "I don't think he buys this story." And I was right.

BROWN: When you were testifying, did you think, my God, I'm committing perjury?

MAGRUDER: Oh, yes. I knew that. But it was loyalty to the president. I mean, that was the whole issue. And that was 35 people were indicted in Watergate. That's a lot of people. All of them bright and good people on the whole.

BROWN: That's sort of the remarkable thing about it, in some respects, is that they were all bright, educated, thoughtful in many respects, and each one at some moment of their life sat, in your case, literally in a courtroom on a witness stand and knew he was committing a crime and did it anyway.

MAGRUDER: I think early on I thought we ought to just say, look, this is what happened, but the president decided not to do that. And the loyalty to the president was more than I -- in that case, my own ethical understanding. And I certainly understood the ethics of the issue.

BROWN: Yes. It's nice to meet you. It's a long time ago. No one should ever have to carry all of their life -- you know, in some respects you're always going to be Jeb Magruder. I mean, it's part of your story. MAGRUDER: True.

BROWN: But in fairness to you and to lots of others, it's not the only part of your story.

MAGRUDER: Right. Well, I've had another good life. So I feel comfortable.

BROWN: It's good to see you.

MAGRUDER: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, sir.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I asked him what he thought his life would have been like if it hadn't been for Watergate. He said he thought he would run for office in California. He went to jail and became a Presbyterian minister.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a check of the headlines and why it's not hard for anyone to deny that atrocities were committed against the Bosnian Muslims a decade ago. It was all caught on tape as they say.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Think of this as a vaccination for the next time you think it can't happen here or can't happen now. It can. It is.

About 10 years ago, 8,000 Muslims were massacred by ethnic Serbs in a corner of what used to be Yugoslavia. Tonight, eight former Serb militiamen are in custody, recognized from when the video you're about to see was recently played at the trial of Serbia's former president.

This is rough stuff, we warn you. The report from ITV's Romilly Weeks.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROMILLY WEEKS, ITV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a massacre that the U.N. failed to prevent, the worst atrocity of the Bosnian War, but until now, no footage of Srebrenica had ever seen the light of day.

The video shows young men, handcuffed and bloodied, in the hands of a notorious Serb paramilitary unit. The Serbs shout insults, and it seems the Muslims are about to be shot.

Instead, as the soldiers laugh and pose, a shot is fired over their victims' heads. Psychological torture and, as it turns out, only a brief reprieve, as the men are led away to a clearing where they have to stand in a line and step forward to be gunned down one by one.

We won't show the moment the men are killed, but each was made to watch as his friends were shot, six out of the 7,000 who were murdered by the Serbs at Srebrenica.

Afterwards, two of the men are made to carry the bodies of their dead comrades before they, too, are brutally tortured and shot.

The footage was filmed by one of the paramilitaries. Today eight of those who appear in this film were arrested in Belgrade. The video was shown as evidence in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. A recent poll showed that half the Serbian population still don't believe there was any massacre at Srebrenica. They might have to change their minds now.

Romilly Weeks, ITV news.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A "Then & Now" still ahead, but first, we head to Atlanta. Erica Hill with some of the night's other headlines -- Erica.

ERIC HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS: Hi, Aaron.

Tonight the embattled mayor of Spokane, Washington, said he's not stepping down from office. Just a short time ago, Mayor Jim West told reporters he is staying put.

West is under pressure to resign following allegations that he sexually abused two boys many years ago. He tried gave a city job to a young man he met on the Internet. City officials and Republican Party leaders have called on him to quit.

The State Department today singled out 14 nations it says are not doing enough to stop the trafficking of human beings. Most of the victims are women and children, who are sold as prostitutes, sex workers and forced laborers.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, two key U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, are on that list.

Three years ago, people across the country were both horrified and fascinated by what happened to a teenager in Utah named Elizabeth Smart. Tonight her story, as we continue our anniversary series, "Then & Now."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you having fun?

ELIZABETH SMART, KIDNAPPING VICTIM: Yes.

BROWN (voice-over): Elizabeth Smart was not a little girl lost. She was a little girl stolen. In the summer of 2002, she was taken from her bedroom in suburban Salt Lake City during the night. It was the anguish of her parents that touched the country.

ED SMART, ELIZABETH'S FATHER: Please let her come home.

LOIS SMART, ELIZABETH'S MOTHER: We need her and she needs us.

BROWN: Thousands mobilized to look for the 14-year-old in what seemed to be a hopeless search. Then, nine months after being taken, she was found.

E. SMART: It's real! It's real!

BROWN: She had been taken and held by a man who once worked with for the Smart family. Elizabeth is now 17, a high school student, talking very little about her ordeal.

Elizabeth Smart is now a quiet activist for missing children and was present at the White House for the signing of the national Amber Alert bill. But her parents say she really is just a normal teenager who dates and drives and spends time with friends.

E. SMART: Focusing on herself and moving forward is a tremendous example for others.

BROWN: Elizabeth Smart has received honors and awards for her courage. And even today, people still recognize her.

E. SMART: Essentially as the end came about, a girl that belonged to everyone. And that was how she was found.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Okey-dokey. Time to check "Morning Papers" from around the country and around the world. Haven't done this in awhile. Let's see if I still remember how.

"The International Herald-Tribune": "Forgotten Afghan War, Taliban Remains Vibrant." I thought we -- I thought we won that one already. I thought it was over. But apparently not. It's on the front page of the "International Herald-Tribune," published by "The New York Times" in Paris.

The "Chattanooga Times Free Press." Down here, OK? "Employers Boost Payrolls as Unemployment Rate Dips." It's an interesting headline because I think most people would tell you the story was how few jobs were created last month. Certainly, the stock market saw that. But unemployment did drop to 5.1 percent, so there's your headline. Seventy-eight thousand new jobs were created, not 274,000 as hoped.

"Washington Post." I was going to go -- I was going to go the whole program without mentioning this today. "At Jackson Trial, The Jury is Out". There's Michael waving, on his way to wherever he's on his way to. And we'll mention that again when the jury comes back.

Down here, we mentioned this briefly earlier, "Pentagon Details Abuse of Koran. Detainees' Holy Book was Kicked, Got Wet." It is not an accident, ladies and gentlemen, that the Pentagon released that story late on Friday. All bad news comes out late on Friday in government.

The Rocky Martin -- the Rocky Martin? No, that's Ricky Martin or "The Rocky Mountain News": "The Churchill Files." A news investigation of charges before a CU -- Colorado University panel -- reveals strong evidence of possible misconduct by Professor Ward Churchill.

He is the guy that said some wacky things about 9/11. And he's quoted here as saying, "You're not qualified to assess my scholarship." And I'm not. "I'm not going to spend the rest of my life talking about my ancestry." Some question about whether he's a Native American or not.

How are we doing on time there, Will? OK. Thank you.

"The Des Moines Register." "D.M." -- that would be Des Moines -- "to Lose Downtown Icon. Those of you in the Midwest will no longer be able to go to the Yonkers -- I gather that's a department store. It's regrettable, but it creates opportunity. Speaking of opportunity, if you're in Chicago tomorrow, the weather -- thank you -- frizzy.

We'll wrap it up for the week in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We'll see you on Monday. Have a good weekend. Good night for all of us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired June 3, 2005 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, again.
Imagine this. Two people have identical illnesses, two cases of cancer, for example, the same cancers in same places for both. Now, imagine there's a drug that cures one of those people but not the other. Imagine that that drug, the one that cured the one person, might well come off the market because it didn't cure the other. That curing one person wasn't enough.

That greatly simplified -- and we do mean greatly -- is where we begin tonight. The story of a patient, a cancer, a drug and the complicated business of what means success.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Kate Robbins is alive today and there is nothing simple about that fact.

Almost 3 and-a-half years ago, she learned she had lung cancer, a cancer that had spread to her brain.

KATE ROBBINS, CANCER SURVIVOR: I was stunned. And deep sadness. I was just in panic, actually -- in disbelief. I was 44-years-old. I had a 9 and 11-year-old children. And my husband and I just could not believe what was happening.

BROWN: The diagnosis a shock, because Robbins had never smoked.

The first oncologist she saw said she could expect to live nine months. Nearly two-thirds of people diagnosed with advanced lung cancer die within a year, fewer than 2 percent live five years. Kate Robbins decided to ignore statistics.

ROBBINS: What I resolved was that I wanted to be very aggressive about my treatment. Really at that time, what I was -- I wasn't thinking cure as much as I was thinking of extending my time with my family.

BROWN: At Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Robbins found an ally in Dr. Tom Lynch, the head of thoracic oncology.

Well, We knew in Kate's situation early on that the cancer had spread. And we knew that this was going to be something which was going to be very challenging. ROBBINS: They ultimately said that no one holds the answer to survival rates. And that, you know, we'll plow ahead and see where it brings us.

BROWN: Robbins began a full force attack on her cancer. The radiation, surgery, multiple rounds of chemotherapy. Her blood counts dropped, her hair fell out. She lost 30 pounds, but the cancer continued to spread.

ROBBINS: We get this crushing blow. Dr. Lynch came in to my hospital room. He was wonderful. He said you know, I -- it's difficult to know what to say to a patient at this stage. And yet, he said, I've seen so many different patients pull through in ways that, you know, you just can't imagine will happen. And so he said, you know, don't lose hope.

LYNCH: I think one of the most important things you can tell a patient at that point is that you are going to do everything you can to give them the best chance of surviving this cancer. And you're not going to give up on them. And you're going to keep looking for options that are going help them with that tumor.

ROBBINS: I hadn't given up hope, but it was very difficult to continue to keep propping yourself up emotionally.

BROWN: Robbins began to face the fact that she might not see her children grow up.

ROBBINS: I started a journal for each of them. And would basically just write impressions of that day with them. You know, what they wore going to school, or how I would walk up to the bus stop with them and watch them get on the bus and wave.

It was very hard. And yet I felt it was important, because I was able to share -- share things that I couldn't verbalize to them. Because I wanted to be strong, and I didn't want to frighten them with the diagnosis any more than they needed to be.

BROWN: Eight months after her diagnosis, Robbins was almost out of options, almost. There was one other treatment to try, an experimental drug called IRESSA, a drug designed to target an enzyme cancer cells require to grow.

LYNCH: If you can block the enzyme, you can prevent that signal from telling the cell to grow.

BROWN: The way IRESSA was supposed to work was unique and also unproven. Robbins enrolled in a clinical trial and put her hope in the small red pills.

ROBBINS: I started taking once a day an IRESSA pill. It was amazing to me that this one little pill was going to do anything, you know, to help my situation.

LYNCH: You're always nervous, both the doctor and the patient are incredibly nervous when you look at a scan report and try to figure out are we making progress against this?

BROWN: It was now almost a year after Kate Robbins learned she had stage 4 lung cancer. Now she was about to learn if the only treatment left to save her life was working.

ROBBINS: He said, there's been no added tumors. And no additional growth. And this was wonderful, because everything was blooming at such a rapid rate.

BROWN: On Robbins' next visit, the news was even better. Some of the smallest tumors had disappeared. The largest appeared to be shrinking.

ROBBINS: Overwhelming joy. It meant I was going to have more time. And it meant that I would be able to see my children's birthdays in April. It meant that I would probably see another spring and summer.

LYNCH: To see that scan, to see the shrinkage was remarkable.

ROBBINS: They didn't know it at the time, but Robbins, like a fraction of lung cancer patients, has a genetic mutation that is thought to make their tumors vulnerable to drugs like IRESSA. And Robbins' next visit, the unimaginable.

LYNCH: So this was a C.A.T. scan that was taken right before we started IRESSA. And just from looking at this, you can see there are at least 10 to 14 different areas of cancer.

And this is her most recent C.A.T. scan. You can see really complete disappearance and a virtually normal appearing liver. In fact, it is a normal appearing liver on CT Scan.

BROWN: Robbins scans were entirely clear.

ROBBINS: You almost couldn't believe that you were looking at the same person's scan. And my husband Mark and I -- I mean, I just cried. You know, you're on the edge of the darkest days that you could ever imagine. And the sun comes out.

LYNCH: This is probably something seen in only a handful of patients, maybe 5 percent of the patients who get IRESSA. What's even rarer about it is the duration of benefit and how long she's been tumor-free.

ROBBINS: Two years later, Robbins' scans remain clear. She has her old life back, though nothing is quite the same.

ROBBINS: I know before my cancer diagnosis, it was so sad for me to have my children grow up. Each birthday, I was somewhat wistful that their childhood, they were growing so fast. And now I celebrate it, because I know how precious it is and how close I came to missing out.

LYNCH: I think her response is as good as it gets. And I've had a number of patients -- I've probably will 20, 25 patients over the past four years that I felt have had these kind of dramatically responses.

BROWN: 25 patients out of the hundreds he has treated, 25. Robbins knows she's the rare exception.

ROBBINS: No one's even used the word remission for me. Partly because we're in uncharted waters.

BROWN: Most patients who respond to IRESSA eventually develop a resistance to the drug. When that might happen for any one patient is impossible to predict. And now, another unknown as well, the possibility that IRESSA may be taken off the market.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Months after Kate Robbins began taking the drug, the FDA approved it based on studies showing that it shrank tumors in about 10 percent of patients. But the approval came with a catch, the company that makes IRESSA, AstraZeneca, would have to prove later in large clinical trials that it actually helps lung cancer patients live longer. And so far those trials have failed.

And today, IRESSA is no longer the only option, though it still may be the best option for patients like Kate Robbins.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBBINS: IRESSA, essentially, along with, I think, prayer and faith has saved my life. It's allowed me to be a mother to my children.

BROWN (voice-over): Kate Robbins might seem to be living proof, dramatic proof of the effectiveness of the anti-cancer drug IRESSA. But that's not how science works. Diagnosed more than three years ago with advanced lung cancer, today Robbins shows no evidence of the disease. Her tumors have apparently disappeared.

And now the drug she credits with saving her life is under fire.

DR. PETER LURIE, PUBLIC CITIZEN: I wouldn't want my patient on it, especially when I know that there are other drugs that have positive mortality data. The real point is that the drug needs to work.

BROWN: Dr. Peter Lurie is the deputy director of health research for Public Citizen, a group that wants IRESSA taken off the market.

It all comes down to proof, he says. IRESSA's manufacturer has never proved in large clinical trials that the drug actually helps lung cancer patients live longer.

LURIE: The evidence for response with this drug is actually very limited.

BROWN: In a statement, AstraZeneca, the company that makes IRESSA, told CNN: "Clearly, many patients are benefiting from IRESSA, some with durable responses." Kate Robbins is one of those patients. But in the world of science, she is one person; she is not a scientific study. When she began taking the IRESSA more than two years ago, there were no other treatments for advanced lung cancer. Since then a similar drug, Tarceva, has become the drug of choice when chemotherapy and radiation fail.

Dr. Tom Lynch, Kate Robbins' oncologist, says, if she were diagnosed today he would prescribe Tarceva, not IRESSA.

DR. TOM LYNCH, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL: Tarceva replaced IRESSA. It's better for patients. It's a terrific thing. IRESSA didn't fail; Tarceva just came along and was a little bit better.

BROWN: Better because Tarceva has proved in large clinical trials that it helps lung cancer patients live longer. And that is part of the problem with keeping IRESSA on the market according to Public Citizen.

DR. PETER LURIE, PUBLIC CITIZEN: There are currently about 300 patients a week who are getting new prescriptions for IRESSA. And a big concern is diverting patients from effective drugs to ones that have not been proven to be effective.

BROWN: AstraZeneca told CNN it believes most of those new prescriptions are being filled for patients already taking IRESSA.

Dr. Paul Bunn, a lung cancer expert and past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists, says he believes most doctors are now prescribing Tarceva instead of IRESSA.

DR. PAUL BUNN, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO CANCER CENTER: Medical oncologists are extremely compulsive, and they pay tremendous attention to the literature and to the results of clinical trials. And they will do what they feel is best for their patients.

BROWN: Dr. Bunn says that the length of survival is only one measure of a drug's effectiveness.

BUNN: Patients with lung cancer have a lot of symptoms from their disease. Almost all patients have cough; almost all patients have pain. Majority have shortness of breath. About 40 percent of unselected patients with advanced lung cancer will have symptom benefit from IRESSA or Tarceva.

BROWN: Recently researchers have discovered genetic mutations that may explain why some patients respond to IRESSA and Tarceva.

Kate Robbins has one of those mutations. Her cancer doctor says that studying IRESSA in patients who have the mutations could change the research scorecard.

LYNCH: I think if you looked at it in a more targeted selective group, you would find that IRESSA did benefit patients, some patients with lung cancer.

BROWN: He also says not every patient can tolerate Tarceva.

LYNCH: I think Tarceva is a much more potent drug than IRESSA is. And for many of my patients who were on IRESSA, I was able to switch them to Tarceva, but for others I wasn't.

BROWN: Doctors Lynch and Bunn have both consulted for the two companies that make IRESSA and Tarceva. They treat hundreds of lung cancer patients each year, and both men believe that IRESSA should stay on the market.

LYNCH: I think one has to remember, you're dealing with a disease where patients have a uniform fatal prognosis without these drugs. And I think that these drugs are incredibly important in offering hope to patients.

BUNN: When the drug works, it makes a tremendous difference. Patients also appreciate the fact that they don't lose their hair, they don't have nausea, vomiting, and all the other standard side effects of regular chemotherapy.

KATE ROBBINS, LUNG CANCER SURVIVOR: It's scary and frightening to think that there could ever be a possible time that IRESSA might not be available to me, you know, or to anyone else that's having any sort of response with it.

BROWN: If IRESSA were taken off the market, Public Citizen says patients already taking it, like Robbins, would still have access to it as an experimental drug. AstraZeneca told CNN that it is in fact "committed to maintaining access to IRESSA for patients who may benefit, and we believe removal from the market is unnecessary while further data are collected."

There's nothing simple about the story of IRESSA. By the standards of science, it's a drug that so far has missed its mark. But at the same time, Kate Robbins is very much alive.

ROBBINS: It's been a remarkable journey that continues. And so I'm just phenomenally grateful for this blessing.

BROWN: The FDA says it's reviewing all of the data on IRESSA. A decision could come some time this summer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In just a bit on the program, what if Watergate did not happen? How would the country be different today?

But first, near a quarter past the hour, Erica Hill is in Atlanta tonight and has the headlines. Erica, good to see you.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: And you as well, Aaron. Good evening.

Tonight, the Pentagon has released details of instances where military guards at Guantanamo Bay mishandled copies of prisoners' Korans. An investigation has determined one guard deliberately kicked a Koran; another stepped on one. Water balloons caused some copies to get wet. Prison guard's urine came through an air vent, splashing a prisoner and his Koran. And an obscenity was written inside another. Investigators say they found evidence that detainees, not guards, tried to flush a Koran down a toilet.

A Virgin Atlantic flight from London to New York was diverted to Canada today, after the jet sent out a false alarm that it was being hijacked. Now, it appears to be a case of equipment malfunction. The plane was inspected and then did proceed to New York.

Michael Jackson's future now in the hands of the jurors. They began deliberations this afternoon. No verdict was reached. So they will resume on Monday morning.

Jackson was in court today, but will remain at his ranch until a decision is reached.

And that is the latest from HEADLINE NEWS at this hour. Aaron, back over to you.

BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in about a half an hour. More coming up from us in the hour ahead. Tough choices on medical, ethical and the moral frontier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN (voice-over): Two families, two choices.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I didn't want to be in heaven and have the spirit or the face of this child come up to me and say, mommy, why wasn't I important enough?

PAMELA MADSEN, DONATED EMBRYOS: Those embryos can help somebody else's baby walk. Those embryos can help some poor child suffering with diabetes.

BROWN: The human faces in the battle over stem cells, frozen embryos and life.

Which brings us to a larger question. From a sheep to a stem cell, how far have we come and where are we going?

RICHARD NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: People have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.

BROWN: But crook or not, what if he had survived Watergate? What the world today might look like without Deep Throat back then.

No need to speculate about this, because this is NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We exaggerate but only a bit in saying that recent American history -- politics, medicine, you name it -- could be written in just one word: Abortion.

The latest episode involves as many as 400,000 frozen embryos in fertility clinics around the country. Ordinarily, they would be thrown out. But for doctors who want to use them to cure disease, and others who consider them morally no different from a grown person. They are pushing for embryo adoption.

In Kentucky, for instance, pushing for a law to make the creation of any embryo not implanted in a womb a felony.

Nationwide, neither the law nor the debate is close to being settled. So instead of law, we are faced simply with choices. Here's CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These four children, Savannah and Marshall Gray (ph), Tyler and Spencer Madsen all began life in a Petri dish -- the products of in vitro fertilization. And the dilemma their parents faced is now at the heart of the national debate over stem cells.

In the process of conceiving their children, the Madsens and the Grays had unused embryos that were sitting in freezers. The two made very different choices about what to do with them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Suddenly in the same instant that I realized that I was pregnant with our fourth child, in the same exact instant, the thought went through my mind of, oh, my goodness, what are we going to do with 23 embryos?

COHEN: The Grays donated them to an infertile couple.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I didn't want to be in heaven and have this spirit or the face of this child come up to me and say, mommy, why wasn't I important enough?

COHEN: But the Madsens donated their unused embryos to stem cell researchers.

PAMELA MADSEN, DONATED EMBRYOS: Those embryos could help somebody else's baby walk. Those embryos could help some poor child suffering with diabetes.

COHEN: The embryos are a rich source for stem cells, which seem to hold promise for treating various diseases.

But for the Grays, the embryos are unborn babies.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is a very real picture for us, knowing that these embryos are the joining of a man and a woman.

COHEN: Pamela Madsen supports the concept of embryo adoption, but couldn't stand the thought of having her own biological children being raised by someone else, far away from her. MADSEN: I wasn't the kind of mother that could let go in that way, wondering about a baby out there in the world, maybe needing me in some way.

COHEN: Two women, two very different choices. Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Not so long ago the choice simply wasn't available. We spent a good deal of the week looking back on 25 years since this network first went on the air. Tonight, a quarter of a century, and the frontiers of medicine.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): We certainly know more about how the body works than ever before. What was barely imagined in 1980 has now been achieved: The decoding of the human genetic map. Humbling to learn that so few genes, only about 15 percent, separate men from mice or sheep.

We can do more, too. Remember Dolly? Cloning mammals from a single cell that paved the way for creating human embryos and bitter and difficult ethical debates.

We innovate more. Nuclear medicine, new in 25 years.

But this isn't. Cancer, in many ways, remains a frustratingly intractable foe. Despite progress in breast, colon and cervical cancers, those in the trenches are realistic about that elusive cure.

DR. LEONARDO SALTZ, MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER: I don't believe you're going to wake up one morning and see a banner headline that cancer has been cured. I think what you are going to continue to see is these important small steps that over time are going to add up to covering quite a lot of distance.

BROWN: The distance from heartbreak to hope, logged in the battle against AIDS. A few sick men with odd symptoms in 1981 proved the vanguard of an epidemic that would kill millions. By the mid- '90s, new drugs, for those who could afford them, made AIDS less deadly, more manageable.

DR. JERRY AVORN, AUTHOR, POWERFUL MEDICINE: The development of treatments for AIDS has been one of the miracles of the last 25 years. Now it is becoming, thanks to some of the wonderful medications that we have, a chronic illness that gets managed, just as if we manage other chronic illnesses. And that's a transformation that is just unprecedented.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One pill, 24 hours.

BROWN: But also unprecedented, the more than $4 billion spent by drug companies annually to market medicines directly to consumers, a change the FDA allowed only eight years ago. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ask your doctor if Lipitor is right for you.

BROWN: Since 1980, U.S. drug sales have tripled. The $250 billion industry has been the nation's most profitable for nearly all of the last 10 years.

AVORN: We're paying way more than any other country per capita for our drugs, and yet most of that is going for marketing promotion and administration and shareholder profit, and only about 11 cents on the dollar is actually going back into research. And that's not a very good return on investment.

BROWN: None of the 10 best-selling drugs today existed in 1980, but only one is entirely new. The others, slightly altered versions of older formulas, because innovation is slow-going and costly.

CHARLES DELISI, DEAN EMERITUS, BOSTON UNIV.: So far from the human genome project, there's no single major discovery or drug that one can identify.

BROWN: The 600 or so clinical trials in gene therapy have yet to produce a major breakthrough. But in an era of accelerated change, history runs by its own clock, as Charles Delisi, often called the father of the human genome project, reminds us.

DELISI: In the context and the scale of 300 years, a few decades is a very short time. We just haven't been at it long enough. But the promise is we're in the midst of a revolution, that is for sure.

BROWN: We can only imagine where that revolution might take us in the next 25 years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Just ahead on the program, what if? What if Watergate had not happened? What if President Nixon did not resign? What might the country look like today?

And later, there are Serbians who don't believe atrocities were committed against the Bosnian Muslims. We'll show you the videotape that makes it impossible to ignore.

We'll take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Mostly around here we concern ourselves with what is, not what if. But the events of this week have made us wonder some. When Mark Felt revealed himself as Watergate's Deep Throat, the debate over the correctness of his actions ensued.

So what if he hadn't talked to those two reporters? What if all things that became Watergate went undiscovered? What if history didn't unfold the way it did? What if?

Here's our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): August 9, 1974, Watergate's final chapter. As the first president in American history to resign -- hold it, hold it. Imagine this never happened. Imagine that Nixon or John Mitchell or somebody had said, a burglary, at Democratic headquarters? Are you nuts?

Or suppose there had been no Deep Throat or any other source to guide Woodward and Bernstein down the money trail? Or that we'd never learned about those tapes?

Imagine, in other words, that Richard Nixon had served out his second term and done it without the cloud of scandal.

(on camera) The what-ifs are fascinating. They suggest, in fact, that everything from our politics to our journalism to our national culture might have been very, very different.

(voice-over) Start with our politics.

SPIRO AGNEW, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: I had not resign...

GREENFIELD: Vice President Agnew still would have been forced out of office in the fall of 1973. His misdeeds had to do with bribes, not Watergate.

But without Watergate, Nixon would not have had to reach out to Congress by picking House Republican leader Gerald Ford. He might well, have turned to one of his personal favorites, Democrat turned Republican John Connolly. And that, in turn, would have made Connolly a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 1976.

Also without Watergate, the appeal of a Washington outsider like, say, California Governor Ronald Reagan, might have been less compelling. And it's just possible that conservatism's most articulate spokesman might never have had a real shot at national office.

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president.

GREENFIELD: And speaking of outsiders, would a peanut farmer turned governor like Jimmy Carter, who boasted of his lack of Washington experience, really been a likely Democratic presidential nominee? Or would a Washington face, Senator Scoop Jackson, Congressman Mo Udall, even former vice president, Hubert Humphrey, have been more likely?

And a likely Democratic presidential nominee?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Opening the mail of American citizens for over...

GREENFIELD: What about public policy? After Nixon quit, Congress asserted its power over an imperial presidency and essentially refused to fund the Vietnam War any longer.

In 1975, the communist north conquered the south, and the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. To this day some conservatives argue that, had Nixon not left, these events and the subsequent genocide in Cambodia might never have happened.

Another question: without the loss of Vietnam, would later enemies of the United States have come to believe that this nuclear superpower was a paper tiger which could be successfully attacked?

Other what-ifs. Would American journalism have developed quite as big an appetite for the political scandal? Would every political controversy have been labeled as another "gate"?

And would the press and the public have developed so strong a sense that government itself was a suspect institution? In 1964, one major survey showed more than three-fourths of Americans trusted the government to do what is right almost all or most of the time. A decade later a little more than a third did.

(on camera) Which leads to this final what if: without Watergate, which led to big Democratic gains in the Congress and to a Democratic White House takeover in '76, would the distrust in government grown so great that most Americans now accept the central conservative premise that government is often not the solution but the problem?

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What if? And so Watergate is part of our history. And up next on the program, our conversation with a former top aide to President Nixon, who went to prison for his role in the scandal. How Watergate changed the life of Jeb Magruder. A break first. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: When Jeb Magruder was sentenced to prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up, he had this to say. "I am confident," he said, "that this country will survive its Watergates and its Jeb Magruders." We did. And as it turns out, so did he.

It was a young Jeb Magruder along with a lot of other young and talented people who went to jail back then. It was a different Jeb Magruder who emerged and who we talked with earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Are you surprised that there has been, this week, this debate over whether Deep Throat was -- and because of the way debates tend to go in the country these days, it's almost been cast as either this great hero or this great villain?

JEB STEWART MAGRUDER, FORMER NIXON AIDE: Well, I wouldn't put him in either category. My guess is he, for whatever reasons, one reason was he was passed over for director of the FBI. And another reason was that he probably decided that what he knew was going on was wrong.

And he couldn't go through the chain of command, which I think somebody, Pat Buchanan, or someone said that. You know, he was stuck. He couldn't have gone through us. We certainly wouldn't have been happy if he'd us about what we were doing.

BROWN: In every situation, there's a moment, I think. What was the moment where you knew for Jeb Magruder this was going down? This was bad?

MAGRUDER: Well, I knew it when I -- well, there were two -- well, I knew it -- actually, when I got the phone call from Liddy on that Saturday morning after the break-in, Mitchell and I were in Los Angeles for a campaign event.

That moment I thought, this probably will go down the wrong way. Then later, you know, I thought, well, maybe we'll make it out of this. But when I knew McCord had sent his letter to Judge Sirica, then I knew that it was over, because Dean and I had already testified under oath. And when he named Dean and I, I knew that was the beginning of the end.

BROWN: You figured you could withstand whatever the press was doing, but you probably couldn't withstand what Judge Sirica was doing?

MAGRUDER: When I was testifying at Liddy and Hunt and McCord's trial, I remember looking at Sirica myself and saying to myself, "I don't think he buys this story." And I was right.

BROWN: When you were testifying, did you think, my God, I'm committing perjury?

MAGRUDER: Oh, yes. I knew that. But it was loyalty to the president. I mean, that was the whole issue. And that was 35 people were indicted in Watergate. That's a lot of people. All of them bright and good people on the whole.

BROWN: That's sort of the remarkable thing about it, in some respects, is that they were all bright, educated, thoughtful in many respects, and each one at some moment of their life sat, in your case, literally in a courtroom on a witness stand and knew he was committing a crime and did it anyway.

MAGRUDER: I think early on I thought we ought to just say, look, this is what happened, but the president decided not to do that. And the loyalty to the president was more than I -- in that case, my own ethical understanding. And I certainly understood the ethics of the issue.

BROWN: Yes. It's nice to meet you. It's a long time ago. No one should ever have to carry all of their life -- you know, in some respects you're always going to be Jeb Magruder. I mean, it's part of your story. MAGRUDER: True.

BROWN: But in fairness to you and to lots of others, it's not the only part of your story.

MAGRUDER: Right. Well, I've had another good life. So I feel comfortable.

BROWN: It's good to see you.

MAGRUDER: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, sir.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I asked him what he thought his life would have been like if it hadn't been for Watergate. He said he thought he would run for office in California. He went to jail and became a Presbyterian minister.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a check of the headlines and why it's not hard for anyone to deny that atrocities were committed against the Bosnian Muslims a decade ago. It was all caught on tape as they say.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Think of this as a vaccination for the next time you think it can't happen here or can't happen now. It can. It is.

About 10 years ago, 8,000 Muslims were massacred by ethnic Serbs in a corner of what used to be Yugoslavia. Tonight, eight former Serb militiamen are in custody, recognized from when the video you're about to see was recently played at the trial of Serbia's former president.

This is rough stuff, we warn you. The report from ITV's Romilly Weeks.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROMILLY WEEKS, ITV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a massacre that the U.N. failed to prevent, the worst atrocity of the Bosnian War, but until now, no footage of Srebrenica had ever seen the light of day.

The video shows young men, handcuffed and bloodied, in the hands of a notorious Serb paramilitary unit. The Serbs shout insults, and it seems the Muslims are about to be shot.

Instead, as the soldiers laugh and pose, a shot is fired over their victims' heads. Psychological torture and, as it turns out, only a brief reprieve, as the men are led away to a clearing where they have to stand in a line and step forward to be gunned down one by one.

We won't show the moment the men are killed, but each was made to watch as his friends were shot, six out of the 7,000 who were murdered by the Serbs at Srebrenica.

Afterwards, two of the men are made to carry the bodies of their dead comrades before they, too, are brutally tortured and shot.

The footage was filmed by one of the paramilitaries. Today eight of those who appear in this film were arrested in Belgrade. The video was shown as evidence in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. A recent poll showed that half the Serbian population still don't believe there was any massacre at Srebrenica. They might have to change their minds now.

Romilly Weeks, ITV news.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A "Then & Now" still ahead, but first, we head to Atlanta. Erica Hill with some of the night's other headlines -- Erica.

ERIC HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS: Hi, Aaron.

Tonight the embattled mayor of Spokane, Washington, said he's not stepping down from office. Just a short time ago, Mayor Jim West told reporters he is staying put.

West is under pressure to resign following allegations that he sexually abused two boys many years ago. He tried gave a city job to a young man he met on the Internet. City officials and Republican Party leaders have called on him to quit.

The State Department today singled out 14 nations it says are not doing enough to stop the trafficking of human beings. Most of the victims are women and children, who are sold as prostitutes, sex workers and forced laborers.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, two key U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, are on that list.

Three years ago, people across the country were both horrified and fascinated by what happened to a teenager in Utah named Elizabeth Smart. Tonight her story, as we continue our anniversary series, "Then & Now."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you having fun?

ELIZABETH SMART, KIDNAPPING VICTIM: Yes.

BROWN (voice-over): Elizabeth Smart was not a little girl lost. She was a little girl stolen. In the summer of 2002, she was taken from her bedroom in suburban Salt Lake City during the night. It was the anguish of her parents that touched the country.

ED SMART, ELIZABETH'S FATHER: Please let her come home.

LOIS SMART, ELIZABETH'S MOTHER: We need her and she needs us.

BROWN: Thousands mobilized to look for the 14-year-old in what seemed to be a hopeless search. Then, nine months after being taken, she was found.

E. SMART: It's real! It's real!

BROWN: She had been taken and held by a man who once worked with for the Smart family. Elizabeth is now 17, a high school student, talking very little about her ordeal.

Elizabeth Smart is now a quiet activist for missing children and was present at the White House for the signing of the national Amber Alert bill. But her parents say she really is just a normal teenager who dates and drives and spends time with friends.

E. SMART: Focusing on herself and moving forward is a tremendous example for others.

BROWN: Elizabeth Smart has received honors and awards for her courage. And even today, people still recognize her.

E. SMART: Essentially as the end came about, a girl that belonged to everyone. And that was how she was found.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Okey-dokey. Time to check "Morning Papers" from around the country and around the world. Haven't done this in awhile. Let's see if I still remember how.

"The International Herald-Tribune": "Forgotten Afghan War, Taliban Remains Vibrant." I thought we -- I thought we won that one already. I thought it was over. But apparently not. It's on the front page of the "International Herald-Tribune," published by "The New York Times" in Paris.

The "Chattanooga Times Free Press." Down here, OK? "Employers Boost Payrolls as Unemployment Rate Dips." It's an interesting headline because I think most people would tell you the story was how few jobs were created last month. Certainly, the stock market saw that. But unemployment did drop to 5.1 percent, so there's your headline. Seventy-eight thousand new jobs were created, not 274,000 as hoped.

"Washington Post." I was going to go -- I was going to go the whole program without mentioning this today. "At Jackson Trial, The Jury is Out". There's Michael waving, on his way to wherever he's on his way to. And we'll mention that again when the jury comes back.

Down here, we mentioned this briefly earlier, "Pentagon Details Abuse of Koran. Detainees' Holy Book was Kicked, Got Wet." It is not an accident, ladies and gentlemen, that the Pentagon released that story late on Friday. All bad news comes out late on Friday in government.

The Rocky Martin -- the Rocky Martin? No, that's Ricky Martin or "The Rocky Mountain News": "The Churchill Files." A news investigation of charges before a CU -- Colorado University panel -- reveals strong evidence of possible misconduct by Professor Ward Churchill.

He is the guy that said some wacky things about 9/11. And he's quoted here as saying, "You're not qualified to assess my scholarship." And I'm not. "I'm not going to spend the rest of my life talking about my ancestry." Some question about whether he's a Native American or not.

How are we doing on time there, Will? OK. Thank you.

"The Des Moines Register." "D.M." -- that would be Des Moines -- "to Lose Downtown Icon. Those of you in the Midwest will no longer be able to go to the Yonkers -- I gather that's a department store. It's regrettable, but it creates opportunity. Speaking of opportunity, if you're in Chicago tomorrow, the weather -- thank you -- frizzy.

We'll wrap it up for the week in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We'll see you on Monday. Have a good weekend. Good night for all of us.

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