Exhibit 584

Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents

Exhibit 584 · Research article

Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents

There is no direct evidence that the sugar industry wrote or changed the NEJM review manuscript; the evidence that the industry shaped the review’s conclusions is circumstantial.

Historical analysis of Sugar Research Foundation correspondence (319 documents from the Roger Adams papers, University of Illinois; 27 documents from the D. Mark Hegsted papers, Harvard Medical Library). Reports that the SRF's executive committee approved Project 226 on 13 July 1965, offered $500 to Hegsted and $1,000 to McGandy, and eventually paid $6,500 ($48,900 in 2016 dollars); that the resulting two-part review in the New England Journal of Medicine (1967) disclosed other funding of the authors but not the SRF's funding or participation; and that Hickson (SRF) told Hegsted on 30 July 1965 he would be disappointed if the sucrose aspect were 'drowned out' and on 2 November 1966 that the draft was 'quite what we had in mind'. States limitations: one trade association's papers, no interviews, no direct evidence of authorship or edits. An erratum is listed at JAMA Intern Med 2016;176(11):1729.

Source: Kearns CE, Schmidt LA, Glantz SA; JAMA Internal Medicine 176(11):1680-1685
Date: 12 September 2016 (online); 1 November 2016 (print)
Quoted from: Discussion, 'Study Limitations' (NIH author manuscript, PMC5099084)
Grade: Peer-reviewed
Document: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394
Accessed: 2026-11-09
Cited by: Findings citing this exhibit

Cited by

Finding AGR-2.1: Peer-reviewed On 13 July 1965 the Sugar Research Foundation’s executive committee approved Project 226, a literature review of carbohydrates and cholesterol metabolism, and the foundation paid the Harvard authors D. Mark Hegsted and Robert McGandy $6,500 for it.
Finding AGR-2.2: Peer-reviewed According to Kearns et al. (2016), the 1967 New England Journal of Medicine review by McGandy, Hegsted and Stare disclosed other funding of the authors' experimental research and did not mention the Sugar Research Foundation's funding or participation.
Finding AGR-2.3: Peer-reviewed The Sugar Research Foundation’s research director, John Hickson, told Hegsted on 30 July 1965 that he would be disappointed if the sucrose aspect were “drowned out in a cascade of review and general interpretation,” and on 2 November 1966 that the draft was “quite what we had in mind.”
Finding AGR-2.4: Peer-reviewed Kearns, Schmidt and Glantz state that there is no direct evidence that the sugar industry wrote or changed the manuscript of the 1967 review and that the evidence the industry shaped its conclusions is circumstantial.
Finding AGR-2.15: Open question The documents do not establish whether the Sugar Research Foundation's funding changed the conclusions of the 1967 review.