For generations of Americans, the Johnson & Johnson brand has been a beloved one, as quintessentially American as baseball and apple pie. Its baby shampoo “no more tears” has been a fixture in bathrooms for decades, as has its iconic band aids and talcum power. But it’s this last item, the talcum powder, that may prove to be a tipping point in destroying its hard-won 139-year-old reputation with consumers. Author and freelance investigative journalist Gardiner Harris joins us on The Excerpt to discuss his new book “no more tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson,” which is on bookshelves now.Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to [email protected] Transcript available hereSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of Gardiner Harris's book?
There are two products that immediately come to mind when I think of Johnson & Johnson. One inspired the title of your book, Johnson & Johnson's Baby Shampoo, No More Tears. The other, the topic of your investigation, is J&J's baby powder. What are the risks associated with talcum powder? And can you share some of the evidence you uncovered that the company knew about those risks?
Chapter 2: What are the risks associated with talcum powder?
About talcum powder, the risks are clearly about its chronic contamination with asbestos. But I also want to make clear, Dana, that my book is not just about baby powder. It is about nine separate products. The products that I go through include Tylenol. that is the most widely used drug on the planet and is far more dangerous than most people know.
I also talk about EPO or Procrit that most people know because Lance Armstrong used it to win seven tours to France, but actually ended up killing more than 500,000 Americans in the worst cancer drug disaster in American history. Also, Risperdal, an antipsychotic that is part of a disaster that's killed more than a million Americans.
So through these various products, I point out that Johnson & Johnson has been responsible for contributing or causing more than 2 million American deaths over the last 50 odd years. And that's more deaths than have died in all of America's wars combined. It's an extraordinary toll from what has long been one of the most admired corporations in the world.
And it is that contrast between what we think of Johnson & Johnson and how Johnson & Johnson has actually behaved that is the focus of my book and that I hope people can sort of come away and find ways to protect themselves, not only against Johnson & Johnson, but against corruption writ large in American healthcare.
So can you give us some of the evidence that you uncovered specifically as relates to baby powder?
Sure. So talc and asbestos are chemically identical. They have the same exact constituencies. The only difference between the two is a little bit of pressure and time as to whether those chemicals form into talc deposits or they form in asbestos deposits.
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Chapter 3: How has Johnson & Johnson handled evidence of asbestos in baby powder?
And basically what geologists will tell you is that you cannot have a talc deposit without a little bit of asbestos ribboned in the middle of it. And you can't have an asbestos deposit without some talc ribboned in there. And basically Johnson and Johnson began to understand this problem in the 1950s and the 1960s.
Now, in the 50s and 60s, these small contaminations and these tests showed that up to 3% to 5% of baby powder was asbestos in the early years. But there was asbestos everywhere in American society during those years. There wasn't
a boat plane house car that didn't have asbestos in it and often pure asbestos so it didn't seem like kind of a big deal but science began to discover in the 1960s in the 1970s that even microscopic quantities of asbestos could cause cancer, particularly a cancer of the lining of the lung, which is known as mesothelioma.
The industry then sort of rallied, came up with an asbestos testing standard that it sold to the FDA as safe. In fact, this testing standard would bless talcum powders as being asbestos free, even when they had up to 3% asbestos. And then FDA basically washed its hands of the issue. It didn't have the money to police cosmetics at the time or even now, and it didn't.
And so Johnson & Johnson then tested its own products for decades. repeatedly finding asbestos in Johnson's baby powder, but not telling anyone. And this started to get very, very dark, Dana, beginning in the 1980s as researchers around the world, the first one at Harvard, began doing epidemiological studies comparing the cancer rates of women
who used talcum-based powders like Johnson's Baby Powder with women who didn't. And those studies began to show that women who used talcum-based baby powders suffered somewhere around 80% more cancers, usually ovarian cancer, than women who didn't. And Johnson and Johnson saw this research.
Nearly all other companies that were using talcum powders got away from talcum powders and substituted in cornstarch. Johnson and Johnson stubbornly clung to this iconic product, and it is now paying the price. It has been sued over the last several years by 93,000 people, mostly women suffering ovarian cancer.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Johnson & Johnson's lawsuits?
who are blaming their illnesses and in some cases the death of their loved ones on their use of Johnson's baby powder.
As you say, there are literally tens of thousands of pending lawsuits against J&J. And while this J&J subsidiary is still in bankruptcy because of all the lawsuits, the company's been unable to reach a settlement that's acceptable to the courts. What's the big sticking point here?
So Johnson & Johnson wants to use the bankruptcy system to solve all of its baby powder liability, not only now, but ever in the future. The problem with ovarian cancer and asbestos is that it can take 30 years for asbestos to cause the changes that lead to cancer. So it's possible that Johnson & Johnson will be sued by tens of thousands of women annually every year for 30 years.
And it's that that Johnson & Johnson wants to get out from under. And so tried to use the bankruptcy system to do that. Three judges have now thrown out all three of Johnson & Johnson's bankruptcy claims. And so Johnson & Johnson is now being forced to fight each one of these claims individually in the usual court system.
Chapter 5: Why is Johnson & Johnson using bankruptcy to address its liabilities?
Gardner, did you find that the people you approached for your book, doctors, former employees, were willing to speak to you on the record? What kind of risks did they face in coming forward?
Johnson & Johnson is the most litigious company, arguably, in American history. It has spent more than $35 billion on lawyers and litigation since 2011. It sues anyone at the drop of a hat. And so it also has this huge cavalcade of consultants in just about every major American medical center in the country. So it sort of first tries to kind of sweet talk you. And then if you
are not amenable, it often sues. So the people I talked to universally were really afraid. I ended up getting grand jury records, which, as you may know, Dana, are the last truly secret institutions in American society. So in those documents, I got access to hundreds and hundreds of Johnson & Johnson employees' cell numbers. I called hundreds of them.
I got many of them to talk to me, but only because I promised them again and again that I would keep their names secret.
Tylenol, another Johnson & Johnson product, became a target of product tampering in the 1980s. People died when someone successfully slipped cyanide into Tylenol bottles. The tampering crisis led to their creation of tamper-proof bottles still in use today. They're an important part of the Johnson & Johnson legacy, but your book takes aim at their response. Why?
There is a lot of evidence that Johnson & Johnson knew that poisoning probably happened somewhere in their own distribution system, and that they kept that knowledge from not only the public, but investigators themselves. You know, to this day, Dana, the Johnson & Johnson response in 1982 is considered the gold standard of corporate response to crises, and it's taught.
as among the first things that students at the Harvard Business School, Wharton School, all of them learn. And the lessons that are taught to these students is if you're open, if you're honest, if you do the right thing, the public will reward you and you will be profitable. Those lessons are all wrong.
It's fairly clear that Johnson & Johnson kept a lot of what it knew from the public and from investigators. So the real lessons that students at HBS, at Harvard, and Wharton should be taught is if you lie to the public, you might really get away with this, which is what Johnson & Johnson did and what it has been doing for decades.
Yours is a story about a beloved American brand. At its core, it's a story about the people behind the brand and the people affected by the brand. What compelled you to tell this story?
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