Johnson & Johnson has paid out $4.2 billion in penalties paid out since 2000.
While we see an example of them doing the right thing when people laced their Tylenol with cyanide we see many examples of them doing the opposite.
Then Attorney General Eric Holder said they “recklessly put at risk the health of some of the most vulnerable members of our society — including young children, the elderly and the disabled” for their marketing of the anti-psychotic Risperdal.
Judge Balkman said J&J spread “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaigns” that had “caused exponentially increasing rates of addiction, overdose deaths” with opioids.
There’s the $21.4 million for conspiracy in bribing officials and doctors in foreign countries.
And in the headlines today is their Asbestos contaminated baby powder which they’ve known had problems since 1971, but have worked to cover up ever since.
I’m trying something new reading aloud my Medical Monopoly Musings here on the podcast, as well as some additional commentary. Do you like this format? If so, please let me know in the comments.
Read the full issues and see the references by clicking the Transcript button below.
Medical Monopoly Musings #38
Serial Criminal – Johnson & Johnson
With Johnson & Johnson (J&J) we see $4.2 billion in penalties paid out since 2000. This includes:
• Off-label or unapproved promotions - 10 records for $3.1B
• False Claims Act violations - 12 records for $558M
• Safety violation - 11 records for $407M
• Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation - 3 records for $70M
• Price-fixing - 1 record for $60M
Started in the 1880’s, J&J made its name in various household products such as shampoo, Band-Aids and baby powder. It went on to acquire many pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
Tylenol was its biggest seller, representing one third of its profit in 1982. When someone replaced capsules inside the bottle with one’s laced with cyanide in Chicago, seven people died.
J&J immediately went to the media to tell people to stop taking their product. They issued a nationwide recall to determine the extent of the problem. This is regarded as one of the great cases of a corporation doing the right thing, at tremendous cost to itself. They acted to save the public and they bounced back quickly because of doing so. (And this is where tamper-proof bottles became a thing.)
Yet, as we’ll see in the next post, J&J was hiding evidence of harm in other products as early as the 1970’s with its popular baby powder.
Still I think it’s important to point out with J&J that the criminality has gotten worse with time. This is bound to happen when you realize that corruption expands over time in any large institution.
One of the biggest criminal pharmaceutical company cases occurred in 2013. J&J paid $2.2 billion in fines for marketing the anti-psychotic Risperdal. They marketed that drug for unapproved usages, paid doctors kickbacks and encouraged off-label usage.
Then Attorney General Eric Holder said they “recklessly put at risk the health of some of the most vulnerable members of our society -- including young children, the elderly and the disabled…it constituted a clear abuse of the public trust, showing a blatant disregard for systems and laws designed to protect public health. As our filings make clear, these are not victimless crimes.”
Alex Gorsky was VP of sales and marketing when that false marketing was being perpetrated. Instead of being held liable…he got promoted to his still current position as CEO in 2012.
Under his leadership J&J played a role in the opioid crisis for which they were ordered to pay $572 million to Oklahoma. Judge Balkman said J&J spread “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaigns” that had “caused exponentially increasing rates of addiction, overdose deaths.” Appeals and other court cases are ongoing in the opioid epidemic.
And let’s not forget the $21.4 million criminal penalty for bribes to government officials in Greece, Poland and Romania, as well as kickbacks to Iraq. Included in this were charges of conspiracy…because you know any conspiracy theories about Big Pharma are automatically dismissed by most, yet here is proof of one of them.
There’s so much more. In 2008 J&J engaged in a “phantom recall.” Their Motrin IB capsules were not dissolving so they hired contractors to buy up product off the store shelves thus not going through the official recall methods.
They paid out almost $2.5 billion to 8000 people with flawed hip implants and $117 million for dangerous pelvic mesh surgeries.
Next time, the big cancer causing baby powder debacle…
References:
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=johnson-and-johnson
https://www.corp-research.org/jnj
https://skograndpr.com/2017/02/11/public-relations-case-study-johnson-johnson-tylenol-crisis/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/27/AR2010052705484.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/health/johnson-and-johnson-risperdal-verdict.html
https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-eric-holder-delivers-remarks-johnson-johnson-press-conference
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/business/johnson-johnson-pelvic-mesh-settlement.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/health/oklahoma-opioids-johnson-and-johnson.html
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/johnson-johnson-agrees-pay-214-million-criminal-penalty-resolve-foreign-corrupt-practices-act
Medical Monopoly Musings #39
Johnson & Johnson’s Asbestos Baby Powder
Some people think “conspiracies” can’t exist because someone would talk. Well, this one took only half a century to come to light!
Late in 2019 Johnson & Johnson (J&J) recalled 33,000 bottles of its baby powder. The FDA (finally) found cancer-causing asbestos inside. J&J claimed they had stringent tests, never found asbestos, and that it was safe…except that concerns had been raised back as early as 1971 and many times since.
New York Times reported “An executive at Johnson & Johnson…recommended to senior staff in 1971 that the company “upgrade” its quality control of talc. Two years later, another executive raised a red flag, saying the company should no longer assume that its talc mines were asbestos-free…In hundreds of pages of memos, executives worried about a potential government ban of talc, the safety of the product and a public backlash over Johnson’s Baby Powder, a brand built on a reputation for trustworthiness and health.”
Even the smallest amounts of asbestos are considered carcinogenic, being linked to mesothelioma and ovarian cancer.
Did J&J pull their products like they did with laced Tylenol as covered last time? No…they covered it up every possibly way they could.
In 1976, Arthur Langer at the Mount Sinai Medical Center found asbestos in talcum powders. The president of Mount Sinai issued a news release to say that these were older powders and new ones were safe, though that wasn’t the case. You see, Mount Sinai received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, started in the early 1970’s with $1.2 billion of J&J stock. J&J CEO Philip Hofmann also served on the foundation board.
(Philanthropy obviously can be used for good…and philanthropy can also be used for power and control especially to protect profits.)
J&J put pressure on the FDA to not release what it deemed “untrue information”. This despite scientists reporting “incontrovertible asbestos,” or asbestos fiber counts that “seemed rather high.” They pressed the FDA to use a subpar method that wouldn’t detect amounts under 1%, which FDA officials were okay with.
An internal J&J memo, marked strictly confidential, from a research director, says how science was to be handled. “Our current posture with respect to sponsorship of talc safety studies has been to initiate studies only as dictated by confrontation. This philosophy, so far, has allowed us to neutralize or hold in check data already generated by investigators who question the safety of talc. The principal advantage for this operating philosophy lies in the fact that we minimize the risk of possible self-generation of scientific data which may be politically or scientifically embarrassing.”
Reuters reported, “An early 1970s study of 1,992 Italian talc miners shows how it worked: J&J commissioned and paid for the study, told the researchers the results it wanted, and hired a ghostwriter to redraft the article that presented the findings in a journal.”
And THAT is how you control the scientific consensus. Do you think they’re the only ones to successfully do so? It’s taken almost fifty years for this to now be publicly accepted…even though J&J continues to spin it. Deny, deceive, delay…
Back in February this year, a New Jersey jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $750 million to four people who said that J&J’s baby powder gave them cancer. More court cases are coming.
From baby powder to opioids (where Oklahoma State Attorney Brad Beckworth called them the “kingpin” of the “pharmaceutical industry cartel”), J&J has got their hands in a lot.
Now they’re branching into new territory. Despite this track record (or because of it?!?) they just received a record-breaking $456 million contract to be one of the saviors coming to protect us all with new upcoming vaccine.
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/business/baby-powder-asbestos-johnson-johnson.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/business/johnson-johnson-baby-powder-recall.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5017565-1972-through-1992-lab-reports.html#document/p37/a462821
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5017565-1972-through-1992-lab-reports.html#document/p79/a463497
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5302001-1975-J-J-memo-on-research-philosophy.html#document/p1/a467630
https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/johnson-johnson-hit-with-750m-verdict-in-baby-powder-lawsuit/
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/big-pharma-companies-are-the-drug-kingpins-of-the-opioid-crisis/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/03/30/the-us-just-signed-a-450-million-coronavirus-vaccine-contract-with-johnson--johnson/#16ff3c072946
