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Transvaginal mesh products were approved for use in 1996 after being tested on rats.
Gynecologists began using the surgical mesh to repair urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse conditions in humans that can sometimes occur following childbirth or from old age. The mesh is permanently implanted in the vaginal wall to serve as reinforcement for weakened pelvic muscles, like a little flexible plastic hammock that keeps everything in its proper place.
Within a decade, millions of women worldwide had received the urogynecological mesh implants, most with life-changing positive results. However, a sizable minority had the opposite experience. In this case, a sizable minority meant tens of thousands of real human beings who were all saying the same thing. Transvaginal mesh implants had ruined their lives.
In time, reportedly, the mesh shifts out of place or erodes the tissue in which it had been implanted. The bleeding starts, followed by chronic pain and nerve damage. In some cases, the mesh migrates so drastically that it perforates the organs it was meant to support. These protrusions can lead to severe infections, which can, and have, resulted in death. Removing the mesh is possible, but not easy. The device is designed to fuse with the pelvic tissue over time to become part of the body.
The New York Times likened the removal process to pulling chewing gum out of long, thick hair. And that's only for the most fortunate. Undergoing additional, often numerous, operations was not feasible for everybody. And then I began to have what felt like period pains.
but very intense period pains that would go on for days and weeks and weeks. And I was re-referred back to my gynaecologist who said, "It must be your womb." I had a full abdominal hysterectomy to try and rectify my pain and of course I still had it there after that. So I lost my womb for no reason when I was 39.
That's Claire Cooper. She told the BBC that she first began experiencing pain three years after her vaginal mesh was implanted, but nobody could tell her why. She went back and forth between a general practitioner and a gynecologist, who finally decided the source of her pain must be related to her womb. So they removed it. Claire Cooper was talked into a total hysterectomy, but the pain never went away. Still, the doctors had no answers.
One even suggested that it was all in her head. And he looked at me square in the face and he said, "Claire, we've had you out on an operating table. There is nothing there to see. You are depressed." No, sir. The pain was very real. And Claire Cooper lived with it for many years, if you could call it living. It hurt just to walk. Sitting down could be unbearable sometimes. Sex with her husband hadn't been a consideration in four and a half years.
"I want the procedure banned. I want the material banned," Claire Cooper told the BBC. Sixty-one different medical device companies manufactured the urogynecological mesh. Claire Cooper's just so happened to be made by Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, which based its product on the original by Boston Scientific, which was pulled from the market due to safety issues two years after it was introduced.
Boston Scientific's original version had been approved through the FDA's 510 process for its similarity to other surgical meshes already on the market. And in order to fast track their own approval processes, every manufacturer that entered the market based their vaginal mesh products on Boston Scientific's original. Design flaws and all. Human trials were not required. Claire Cooper and thousands of other victims around the world
were the human trials. At least twice a month, Chrissy Bradstic ends up in hospital. I lay in bed all day in agony. I don't have a life with my friends, my family. Three years ago, she had plastic mesh like this implanted to lift her bladder and stop incontinence following the birth of her children. But she says it left her in pain, and even after the mesh was taken out, she still suffers with sores.
searing and constant infections that no antibiotics can kill. It feels like I'm dying from the inside, and I've lost all sense of normalcy in my life. In 2008, after receiving thousands of reports, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its first public health notice related to the severe complications associated with transvaginal mesh, but described them as rare.
Soon after, researchers determined that between 15 and 25% of implant patients would experience issues. And usually, those issues were far more severe than the conditions the mesh was intended to treat.
According to the New York Times, from 2008 to 2010, there was a five-fold increase in reports to the FDA about complications with the mesh. In January 2012, the agency ordered makers of the implants to conduct post-market surveillance studies to address concerns related to the safety and effectiveness of the products. By June 2012, Johnson & Johnson had announced that it would stop selling its mesh worldwide.
This was not a recall. Johnson & Johnson and Ethicon wanted to make that abundantly clear. The company was not discontinuing its vaginal mesh products over safety and efficacy concerns. In a statement, J&J stressed that the decision was based on the product's, quote, commercial viability in light of changing market dynamics. That's all.
Johnson & Johnson could not admit fault because over the next few years, the company would be named in thousands of lawsuits filed by more than 100,000 plaintiffs across the globe. The first case to go to trial in February 2013 belonged to a 47-year-old nurse from South Dakota named Linda Gross.
After a 2006 operation for pelvic prolapse, Ethicon's transvaginal mesh left Linda in constant, debilitating pain. It took 18 operations to remove and repair, over 400 visits to doctors and physical therapists. She was never the same again. "Who you see standing here now is not who I was," Linda Gross told the jury.
After five days of deliberations, the jury awarded Linda $1.1 million for her pain and suffering, $180,000 for lost wages, $500,000 for future lost wages, $385,000 for past medical treatment, $1 million for future medical treatment, and $180,000 for her husband's loss of companionship and conjugal affections, more than $3.3 million in total.
Linda Gross' verdict gave hope to all of those with pending litigation. Johnson & Johnson, who claimed the dangers of the operation were inherent, must have been filled with dread. It was going to cost billions of dollars to settle all the cases. The company wasn't the only one who saw the writing on the wall.
Predatory lawyers hired telemarketing firms to recruit plaintiffs. They obtained medical records and cold-called recipients of the vaginal mesh implants at home to inform them that their life was in danger and about pending litigation. They even coaxed some of them to have their mesh implants surgically removed. The lawyers had realized that the settlements tended to be more lucrative in those cases.
Some law firms even partnered with specialized financial institutions to fund the removal surgeries for potential plaintiffs at disgustingly high interest rates. Those financial institutions would be reimbursed once the cases were settled. After accounting for the accrued interest on the surgical loans and lawyers fees, there was usually very little left for the plaintiffs. Many had undergone brutal surgeries in makeshift strip mall medical offices. God bless the USA.
Oh, and if you get a chance, save the queen too. I'm not a woman that I used to be. I feel like a helpless, no-hoper. I think I'd be better off dead if I'm like this. Do you know what I mean? I don't want to live like this. Honestly, I've got to...
I don't want to live like this. I want my old life back. Leslie used to be the girl you'd find dancing on tables, loving life and living it to the full. Now, after a 20-minute operation to help cure her mild incontinence, she's in chronic pain, she can't walk, she's lost her job and her marriage and is suicidal.
Leslie Elder, a 50-year-old mother of two from Dorset, had the mesh implanted in 2010. Ever since, she has been unable to walk without a cane. She can't work anymore. She says her husband left her because she couldn't have sex. All she has left is depression, PTSD, and constant crippling pain. And guess what? It was all for nothing.
Leslie Elder had been misdiagnosed. The mesh was unnecessary for her condition. So she sued the National Health Service, claiming she needed two and a half million pounds. While seated in a wheelchair, Ms. Elder told the court that the pelvic mesh procedure had destroyed her life. She was practically confined to her house. She couldn't even travel for her daughter's hen party on the beautiful island of Ibiza. Leslie Elder just wanted her old life back.
The court ruled that Leslie's £2.5 million claim was, quote, grossly exaggerated and awarded her £120,000 instead. Perhaps the court was correct in having its suspicions. Months later, photographs posted on Facebook tagged Leslie Elder in Ibiza. She's standing unaided, wearing a straw hat and a sash that reads, Mother.
When confronted, Leslie told the court that it was a simple holiday. Ms. Elder denied that she had traveled for her daughter Tanya's hen party, which she had previously complained about missing. "Then why," a judge asked, "does the shirt you are wearing in the photograph say 'Tanya's Hen Party'?" Checkmate. Leslie Elder had no explanation. She had also been recorded by a private investigator shopping and walking her dog.
The court found that Leslie Elder had effectively attempted to defraud the NHS out of more than £2.5 million. She was charged with contempt and sentenced to five months in jail. Leslie Elder was not present for her sentencing though. She had been taken to the hospital earlier in the hearing after she was seen swallowing a handful of tranquilizer pills.
Well, new this morning, a major health alert for millions of women. U.S. health regulators are halting the sale and distribution of surgical mesh used to repair pelvic conditions. The move comes after years of reported complications from the implants. Tens of thousands of lawsuits have been filed by women who have reported injuries from the devices.
On April 16th, 2019, the United States Food and Drug Administration ordered manufacturers to stop selling and distributing transvaginal mesh for pelvic organ prolapse conditions. The product had already been banned in Australia and New Zealand a year earlier. Australia had also brought a major class action lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson involving 700 patients. In the UK, patients sued the manufacturers as well as the NHS.
In America, 41 states and D.C. sued the company, alleging that it had misrepresented the risks of its mesh implants. Today the court was scathing in its findings with respect to Ethicon and Johnson & Johnson and has found that their conduct was misleading, that the product should not have been sold, and that consumers have suffered harm as a result.
This case is the largest women's health class action in Australia's history and a landmark decision. In total, the cases have resulted in over $8 billion in settlements. Johnson & Johnson has denied any wrongdoing. After the Australian verdict, a spokesperson for the company said, "Ethicon believes that the company acted ethically and responsibly in the research, development and supply of these products."
Just how ethically and responsibly did Ethicon act? We will never know. It was discovered in 2014, while the future J&J CEO, Alex Gorski, was chief of the Ethicon subsidiary, that the company lost or destroyed thousands of documents and computer files related to the development of its transvaginal mesh products. Aw shucks. There was probably nothing to see anyway.
However, amid the pelvic mesh litigation, Johnson & Johnson was also battling claims that its beloved baby powder was causing cancer. Lucky for us, documents related to that case remain intact, and shocking is an understatement. One of the world's largest and most trusted companies knowingly sells a dangerous product for decades on this episode of Swindled.
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We believe that in serving those who sell our products, we serve ourselves. I'm sure you agree that this philosophy is timeless.
Johnson & Johnson had modest beginnings. In 1886, Robert Wood Johnson and his younger brothers leased a small New Brunswick, New Jersey factory to manufacture and sell surgical dressings and bandages. 135 years later, Johnson & Johnson is a massive conglomerate comprised of more than 250 different operating companies and 100,000 employees in 60 different countries with annual revenues exceeding $90 billion.
It's the second largest biotech company, the fourth largest pharmaceutical company, the world's largest manufacturer of medical devices and diagnostic tools. But those aren't the products for which Johnson & Johnson is best known. This is the company that invented the Band-Aid and the First Aid Kit. They bought the manufacturer of Tylenol, household names like Neutrogena, Listerine, Bizene, Rogaine, Benadryl, Sudafed, Aveeno. These are all Johnson & Johnson products.
However, the company's sacred cow is Johnson's Baby Powder, which was introduced in 1893. It's also been referred to as the golden egg and the trust mark of the company. Johnson & Johnson essentially invented the universally recognized scent of a baby. I viewed that name, Johnson & Johnson, as a trust mark, not a trademark. It was a trust mark.
Because when moms and fathers use our products on their babies, they need to trust it. When people take our medicines, they need to trust it.
Every good and healthy relationship is built on trust. Though baby powder was a century removed from being one of Johnson & Johnson's top sellers, the comfort and safety that is synonymous with that iconic white bottle remain the basis of the company's entire brand. It permeates your earliest memories. That powdery blanket of moisture-free trust and protection. It smells like grandma's house, doesn't it? You'll never feel that clean again.
And it's all thanks to talc, also known as talcum or talcum powder, sometimes magnesium silicate. Talc is the softest naturally occurring mineral on earth. It's been used in cosmetics, chewing gum, condoms, and hundreds of other products. It's the primary ingredient in Johnson's baby powder. Everybody knows that.
But what most people don't realize is that talc is often mined in proximity to asbestos, the once ubiquitous and highly carcinogenic mineral used in insulation and building materials until it was banned in 1989. Asbestos. That's what caught Herschel Hobson's attention in 1997.
His new client, Darlene Coker, from Beaumont, Texas, had never worked in a factory or a mine a day in her life. She had never been exposed to asbestos, but Darlene had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, an aggressive and deadly cancer usually caused by asbestos exposure. It didn't make sense until Herschel Hobson discovered his client Darlene Coker was a lifelong user of Johnson's baby powder.
From previous careers, the lawyer was familiar with how talc was mined. He requested research and documents from Johnson & Johnson related to asbestos testing and its mine workers. The company refused, calling Hobson's request a "baseless fishing expedition."
Even after a pathology report showed that Darlene Coker's lung tissue was riddled with four different types of asbestos fibers, the judge denied Herschel Hobson's request for discovery. There was no concrete evidence that Johnson's Baby Powder was responsible for the plaintiff's condition. The lawsuit was dropped. Twelve years later, Darlene Coker died. Also twelve years later, the FDA commissioned tests of Johnson's Baby Powder after a growing public concern.
No asbestos was found, but cells of the baby powder had taken a hit after the product had been linked to numerous cases of ovarian cancer. A thousand lawsuits soon followed. The first case went to trial in 2013. Deanne Berg, a physician's assistant, was only 49 when she was diagnosed with advanced cancer in her ovaries. "It didn't make sense," she told the New York Post. "There was no ovarian cancer in my family. I didn't smoke. I wasn't overweight.
After undergoing a total hysterectomy within a week of her diagnosis, Deanne learned from a pamphlet given to her by an oncologist that talcum powder had been implicated in the development of ovarian cancer. Like so many other women, Deanne Burke had used Johnson's baby powder, or Johnson & Johnson's shower-to-shower powder, on her perineum every day for 40 years to stay fresh.
That was the product's advertised purpose. Johnson & Johnson specifically marketed the latter as a feminine hygiene product. The late 80s advertisement jingle for shower to shower promised that just a sprinkle a day helps keep odor away, but apparently it was no match for ovarian cancer.
The theory is that when talcum powder is applied to a woman's genital area, the particles containing trace amounts of asbestos travel to the ovaries through the cervix and line the uterus and fallopian tubes where it wreaks havoc. Similar to the way asbestos destroys the lungs and other organs that cause mesothelioma, Deanne Burke first noticed an issue when she started spotting between periods what she thought were premenopausal conditions turned out to be ovarian cancer and her entire life was put on hold.
D'Anne Berg sued Johnson & Johnson. The company offered her more than a million dollars to drop the case and sign a confidentiality agreement. D'Anne Berg refused. She felt it was more important to publicize the link between talcum powder and ovarian cancer. Besides, what good is money if you're dying anyway? Ultimately, a jury in South Dakota found Johnson & Johnson negligent, but not responsible for damages.
D'Ann Berg was not compensated a penny, and her goal of forcing the company to apply warning labels to its baby powder was unsuccessful. But all was not lost. D'Ann Berg's lawsuit paved the way for others. The next case to be heard in February 2016 belonged to Jacqueline Fox. She had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2013. She had sprinkled Johnson's baby powder on her underwear as part of her daily routine for the past 45 years.
This time a jury awarded the plaintiff $72 million, even though the plaintiff, Jacqueline Fox, died four months before the verdict. The multi-million dollar decision in the US marks the first time damages have been awarded over talc claims. Johnson & Johnson is said to be considering an appeal. More than a thousand similar cases are pending and lawyers now say thousands more could be filed.
Thousands more were filed. Despite the jury's decision in the first case, Johnson & Johnson remained confident in its position that there was no causal association between talc and ovarian cancer. They'd proved it time and time again in their lab. The company even launched a website to extol the safety of the talc in its baby powder. That idea probably came from the crisis management lawyers it hired.
Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorski publicly vowed to fight these nasty claims. We're disappointed in some of the recent TALC verdict findings and we always have a lot of empathy for plaintiffs and the families that they may represent.
But in this case, we think frankly it's inconsistent with more than 100 years of experience with powder, more than 30 years of very compelling clinical evidence. So look, in these cases, we think the right thing to do is to appeal it and to continue to fight it, but we put safety and quality first in everything that we do.
Too bad. Johnson & Johnson lost most of the early baby powder cases related to ovarian cancer. In May 2016, a Missouri jury awarded $55 million to one plaintiff. In 2017, a Missouri jury awarded $110 million to another.
Later that year in August, a jury in California awarded $417 million to Eva Echevarria, a 63-year-old medical receptionist from East L.A. Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay more than $400 million in a case tied to one of its most well-known products, baby powder. It's not the first verdict against the company and this product, but it is the largest and it may not be the last.
Johnson & Johnson defended the safety of its baby powder and said it planned to appeal the verdict, which it did in every case. The science was inconclusive and at best inconsistent, according to the company. Again, according to J&J, there was no proven relationship between Johnson's baby powder and ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is a devastating diagnosis and we deeply sympathize with the women and families impacted by this disease, a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.
We will appeal today's verdict because we are guided by the science which supports the safety of Johnson's baby powder. Eva Echeverria died in September 2017 and the massive $400 million verdict in her case was thrown out a month later for insufficient evidence, as was the $72 million awarded earlier to the estate of Jacqueline Fox for improper jurisdiction. 9,000 more cases to go.
That's Toni Roberts. She died from ovarian cancer at the age of 61. Toni was one of 22 women who collectively sued Johnson & Johnson in St. Louis, claiming that the baby powder and shower-to-shower body powder caused their cancers.
Yes, this is terrible, Johnson & Johnson's lawyer told the court in July 2018, but just because something terrible happened doesn't mean Johnson & Johnson had anything to do with it.
the jury disagreed the jury in st louis found that johnson and johnson should pay 4.7 billion dollars in damages to 22 women who said their ovarian cancer was caused by asbestos in the company's signature baby powder again johnson and johnson said it would appeal according to the company this verdict like all the others was based on junk science and emotions not
and distortions of historical documents by the plaintiff's attorneys out for nothing but personal gain. What historical documents, you ask? The ones that Johnson & Johnson tried desperately and successfully to keep confidential throughout all of its baby powder litigation. Fortunately for us, the general public, in December 2018, those documents would finally see the light of day. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
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Now, put on the only summer under thing that will keep you cooler and drier and more comfortable than if you were wearing nothing at all. Put on Johnson's Baby Powder. On December 14th, 2018, two separate investigative reports, one from the New York Times and the other from Reuters, found that Johnson & Johnson had been aware of possible asbestos contamination in its baby powder products for at least 50 years.
The reports were based on internal Johnson & Johnson documents demonstrating how company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors, and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public.
According to Lisa Gerian at Reuters, her report was the first time many of the documents had been made public. They included company memos, internal reports, company emails, test results, and more. Until now, Johnson & Johnson had been able to keep these records sealed by court order.
after seeing them. It's no wonder why. These records make it clear that many people inside J&J were aware that asbestos, a known carcinogen, was detected in the ore they mined, in the talc they milled, and on occasion in the products they sold. According to Reuters, in 1958, Johnson & Johnson discovered that talc from its chief source mine contained tremolite,
Tremolite is one of six minerals that occur in nature as crystalline fibers, known as asbestos. At this time, the dangers of asbestos were not known. Johnson & Johnson's only concern was that the presence of tremolite would make their baby powder scratchy.
But by 1969, the health concerns related to asbestos were becoming more apparent. That year, in a memo, a Johnson & Johnson company doctor advised executives that it would quote, "seem to be prudent to limit any possible content of tremolite to an absolute minimum."
For years, the company had been telling pediatricians that the usage of its powder did not present any hazards to babies or mothers. Such assurances would be impossible, the Johnson & Johnson doctor wrote, if we do include Tremolite in more than unavoidable trace amounts. And added, it is not inconceivable that we could become involved in litigation.
In 1971, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center shared preliminary findings that talc was laced with asbestos with New York City's Department of Environmental Protection. That agency informed the Nixon administration of the results, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration opened an inquiry. "Our 50 years of research knowledge in this area indicates that there is no asbestos contained in the powder manufactured by Johnson & Johnson," the company said in a statement.
But behind closed doors, Johnson & Johnson executives were scrambling. They considered replacing talc in its products until they found out talc was the cheapest. And they tried to discredit research suggesting that the powder could be contaminated with asbestos. The company was worried that the federal government would soon ban talc for use in cosmetic products.
So, Johnson & Johnson made a list of antagonistic personalities that included researchers around the world who had launched a "attack on talc." Johnson & Johnson even sent executives to meet with some of those researchers to try and convince them to avoid "frightening mothers unnecessarily" with their test results. Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson was conducting tests of its own.
In 1971, Johnson & Johnson helped fund a study to inject a mixture of asbestos and talc into the lower backs of 10 inmates at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. This was just one of hundreds of cruel and unethical experiments conducted by University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Dr. Albert Kligman that left 300 mostly illiterate black inmates malformed and severely injured.
Over 20 years, beginning in the early 50s, subjects were injected with viruses, fungi, mind-altering drugs, even dioxin. Some were paid as little as $10 to participate. Anything anybody wanted to have tested on humans, even things that were toxic and carcinogenic and dangerous, could be done there.
That's Alan M. Hornblum. He worked at Holmesburg prison while the studies were taking place. He wrote a book about it called "Acres of Skin." That's how Dr. Albert Kligman described seeing the prisoners for the first time to a newspaper reporter in 1966. "All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a field for the first time." Dr. Albert Kligman died in 2010 at the ripe old age of 93 with no regrets whatsoever.
He told the Baltimore Sun in 1998,
The University of Pennsylvania finally apologized in 2021 for the actions of one of its prestigious faculty members. The city of Philadelphia formally apologized in October 2022 for ultimately giving Dr. Kligman the green light to conduct the experiments for over two decades.
Today, the city of Philadelphia issuing a formal apology for historic wrongdoing. Horrible medical experiments were conducted on inmates at Holmesburg prison from the 1950s through the 1970s. The majority of those inmates were black men who were illiterate. A spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson told Bloomberg that the company deeply regretted the conditions under which the Holmesburg prison studies were conducted. In no way do they reflect the values or practices we employ today.
but that's probably only because it's illegal. It took a literal act of Congress in 1974 to end human experimentation on prisoners and mental patients in the United States. In addition to injecting asbestos into illiterate prisoners without warning them of the certain health consequences, Johnson & Johnson also sent samples of its baby powder to a private lab in Chicago in 1972. That private lab in Chicago reportedly found trace amounts of tremolite but declared it insignificant.
Johnson & Johnson sprinted to the Capitol with the results in hand. "Let it be known that Johnson's baby powder contains a tolerable amount of asbestos," the company told the FDA, as if there were such a thing. The FDA couldn't disagree, but they weren't entirely convinced. The agency's own recent test of Johnson's baby powder turned up nothing, but it was later discovered that the tests used by the FDA were not sensitive enough to detect trace amounts, essentially pointless.
But it was good news for Johnson & Johnson, although the company was still covering its bases. In 1973, J&J explored acquiring a patent on a process invented by a British mineralogist that separated talc from asbestos. Ultimately, Johnson & Johnson decided against it because of the optics. Why would the company need a patent to remove asbestos from talc when it claims there's no asbestos in the talc in the first place? Because Johnson & Johnson knew the truth.
and the company did everything it could to shape a new reality, like funding studies and informing researchers of its desired results, or issuing subjective interpretations of data collected by analysts to employees of Johnson & Johnson had cozied up to. All of its efforts paid off. In 1976, Johnson & Johnson presented its finely tuned data to the FDA that showed that there was virtually no asbestos in its talcum products.
However, J&J conveniently omitted two company-commissioned tests from private labs that had found traces. One of the tests found asbestos particles in almost a third of the samples taken from Johnson & Johnson's talc mine. Some of them seemed rather high, the private lab wrote.
The FDA was none the wiser, and after not being able to reach a consensus on testing methods, the agency abandoned any plans it had to regulate and monitor talc for asbestos. I don't think you can separate individual behavior from corporate behavior.
That's James E. Burke. He was CEO of Johnson & Johnson in 1980, when the company launched a brand new cornstarch version of its baby powder.
Despite the avoidance of regulation, sales of the original talc-based powder had been steadily decreasing over the safety concerns.
Mr. Burke was still CEO in the late 80s when Johnson & Johnson hired an advertising agency to reinvigorate the brand. The company began targeting insecure teenagers in hopes of developing a new generation of customers. Their efforts mostly failed, and according to an internal memo, by the early 90s, Johnson & Johnson's baby powder marketing efforts shifted to, quote, ethnic opportunities to grow the franchise. Baby powder.
Johnson's Baby Powder Oil and Lotion. Baby Powder still retained high usage rates among black and Hispanic customers. Johnson & Johnson spent the next two decades promoting the product to these demographics at concerts, churches, beauty salons, and barbershops. Additionally, the company specifically targeted overweight customers by partnering with Lane Bryant and running ads in Weight Watchers magazine.
When presented with the initial drafts of the campaign, a brand manager at Johnson & Johnson wrote in an email to ask Weight Watchers if they could use photos of "slightly bigger women." They don't have to be super curvy, but a little bigger than the current image would be preferable. Later, a radio campaign in 2010 was aimed at "curvy southern women, 18-49 years old, skewing African American."
Johnson & Johnson would demand its baby powder radio commercials air only when the weather was hot and humid. Now, there's nothing wrong with knowing your audience, but Johnson & Johnson had long known there was a problem. The company had already been sued over allegations that baby powder caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. Yet Johnson & Johnson continued to peddle the product to specific communities, long after it had sold its chief talc mine in Vermont and destroyed all the documents.
Legal counsel for Johnson & Johnson disputed many of the facts presented in the New York Times and Reuters reports that it had known about asbestos and its talc.
The company issued a statement calling the articles "one-sided, false, and inflammatory." Simply put, the Reuters story is an absurd conspiracy theory in that it apparently has spanned over 40 years, orchestrated among generations of global regulators, the world's foremost scientists and universities, leading independent labs, and J&J employees themselves, even though the reports were based entirely on Johnson & Johnson's own documents.
Anyway, in the immediate days after the bombshell articles, the company's stock sank more than 12%. Four days after the reports, Johnson & Johnson lost its bid to overturn the $4.7 billion baby powder verdict awarded to the 22 women who filed in St. Louis that summer.
Johnson & Johnson responded like they always do. The company stood behind its products, denied any wrongdoing, said it had acted completely appropriately, and of course, that it would continue to appeal. I would say it's a matter of protecting customer choice. So yes, it is a small product, but the product has been proven to be safe, not just by people within the walls of Johnson & Johnson, but respected institutions and regulatory authorities alike.
across the globe. So to pull it from the market would seem frivolous at best and set an awful precedent.
Turning now to a recall alert, Johnson & Johnson voluntarily recalling its baby powder, finding low levels of asbestos contamination. The recall limited to one lot of baby powder produced and shipped in the U.S. last year. This is in response to the FDA test that found levels of asbestos in samples from a bottle bought online. Around 33,000 bottles are included in that recall. The company's saying to stop using the powder and call the company for a refund.
In early October 2019, Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder after FDA regulators found a small amount of asbestos in a bottle purchased online. The recall came on the heels of a subpoena issued by the Justice Department and Security and Exchange Commission. Federal officials began investigating the safety of Johnson & Johnson's talc products in response to the thousands of lawsuits that had been filed.
This was terrible news for the company, which had been in damage control mode since the Reuters article. Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorski even appeared on Jim Cramer's Mad Money show on CNBC to ease stockholders' concerns. Well, Jim, thank you very much for having us here today. And look, given all the allegations and some of the reports in the media, I think it's important as the CEO of Johnson & Johnson to be here to not only talk with your viewers, but actually all of our stakeholders.
Gorski said the headlines didn't reflect the underlying reality. Regarding the baby powder, there was nothing to worry about because Johnson & Johnson is a company that prides itself on safety and family values.
Some of the testing that was conducted by Johnson & Johnson employees, I can tell you, not only are these scientists, engineers who studied this and been trained on it, but these are also moms and dads. These are brothers and sisters that I have to believe are looking out for what's in the best interest of patients that they serve each and every day.
In the best interest of patients, Johnson & Johnson tested the recalled baby powder and those moms and dads and brothers and sisters who conducted those tests did not find any traces of asbestos. The company had more than 60 samples analyzed, all of them negative. They blamed the FDA's initial positive results on the portable air conditioner in the FDA's lab.
The FDA disagreed, telling the New York Times that the agency followed standard operating procedures for laboratory analysis and that it saw no indication of cross-contamination. Johnson & Johnson stockholders were getting a bit nervous. By the end of 2019, the company was facing more than 100,000 lawsuits in total: Risperdal, Artificial Hips, Vaginal Mesh, Baby Powder. The Baby Powder lawsuits alone could cost the company as much as $10 billion.
not to mention the opioid epidemic. It was discovered that Johnson & Johnson owned a company in Tasmania that produced and refined poppies into narcotics material. Johnson & Johnson was the leading supplier of the raw opioid ingredients to other drug companies. The company even developed a special strain of poppy called Norman, which served as the core pain-killing agent used in OxyContin.
The state of Oklahoma, which the opioid crisis has absolutely ravaged, took offense and sued Johnson & Johnson for violating its public nuisance law. Oklahoma accused the company of aggressively marketing opioids to vulnerable populations while downplaying the risk of the drugs. Between 2015 and 2018, there were 18 million opioid prescriptions written in Oklahoma, a state with a population of under 4 million people.
Thousands had overdosed and died. Thousands more were hopelessly addicted.
On August 26, 2019, in a bench trial, Judge Dad Bachman ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $465 million to the state of Oklahoma in a landmark ruling. Today, Judge Bachman has affirmed our position that Johnson & Johnson, motivated by greed and avarice, is responsible for the opioid epidemic in our state.
Johnson & Johnson will finally be held accountable for thousands of deaths and addiction caused by their activities. The company used pseudoscience and misleading information that downplayed the risks of opioids, leading to the worst man-made public nuisance ever.
Two years later, an Oklahoma judge overturned the ruling because, quote, Johnson & Johnson and three other major pharmaceutical companies later settled opioid lawsuits from states and cities for $26 billion.
for its part in the opioid crisis. Johnson & Johnson is required to pay $5 billion over nine years. Overnight, Johnson & Johnson announcing a major change to one of its iconic products. The pharmaceutical giant saying it will no longer use talc in its baby powder products sold in the U.S. and Canada. In a statement, the company blaming declining sales fueled by misinformation around the safety of the product and a constant barrage of litigation advertising.
On May 19, 2020, while the world was distracted by COVID-19, Johnson & Johnson announced plans to discontinue sales of talc-based baby powder in the United States and Canada. Only cornstarch-based baby powder would be available from now on. However, the talc-based powder would continue to be sold everywhere else in the world.
The company said the decision was based on declining cells, not health risk. In fact, in January 2020, NBC reported that a US government-led study found "no strong evidence linking baby powder with ovarian cancer in the largest analysis to look at the question." The findings were called "overall reassuring" in an editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Johnson & Johnson remains steadfastly confident in the safety of talc-based Johnson's baby powder. Decades of scientific studies by medical experts around the world support the safety of our product, the company said in a statement. We will continue to vigorously defend the product, its safety, and the unfounded allegations against it and the company in the courtroom.
However, in October 2020, instead of defending itself in the courtroom, Johnson & Johnson chose to settle nearly 20,000 talc-related lawsuits for $100 million. There was no admission of liability. It was probably just the cheapest and fastest solution. Because a few months earlier, Johnson & Johnson had been ordered to pay $750 million in damages to just four women. That trial was notable because CEO Alex Gorski had to actually testify.
He admitted to having not read all of the historical documents on which the lawsuit was based, opting instead to trust the company's experts. In June 2020, the $4.7 billion in damages awarded to the 22 women in St. Louis back in July 2018 was slashed to $2 billion. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Johnson & Johnson's appeal to hear the case a year later.
40,000 talc lawsuits remained, including one brought by the National Council of Negro Women in July 2021 for marketing a potentially dangerous product to black women for decades. The council's executive director, Janice Mathis, told Reuters, quote, Lots of products target African Americans. That's marketing 101. Go where our customers are. What has me disturbed about this is that you didn't give any caveat to the customers. Once you knew there was a possibility there was some danger,
It is about the lives of our grandmothers, our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our nieces, and our wives, and how they were sinisterly targeted by Johnson & Johnson, this multibillion-dollar corporation, who their corporate executives knew existed.
about the link between talcum baby powder and ovarian cancer. In a shocking move, in October 2021, Johnson & Johnson, a giant corporation that earned $94 billion in revenue that year, sought bankruptcy protection to handle the remaining talc lawsuits. The New Jersey-based company orchestrated an elaborate maneuver in which it created a new subsidiary in Texas called LTL Management.
There's a quirky Texas business statute related to divisive mergers that allows corporations to partition their assets from liabilities. In this case, Johnson & Johnson saddled its new subsidiary, LTL Management, with all of the talc-based liabilities and then declared bankruptcy. Doing so effectively halted all baby powder litigation and provided a single forum for evaluating, estimating, and capping the value of personal injury claims.
Johnson & Johnson claims the maneuver will help resolve current and future claims in a manner that is equitable to all parties. Critics say the company is hiding behind bankruptcy to limit its legal exposure and avoid potential liability.
Andy Birchfield, a lawyer for Beasley Allen Law Firm, which has worked on litigation against Johnson & Johnson, said in a statement, "...here's another example of the wealthy and powerful using bankruptcy as a hiding place to protect their profits and avoid responsibility. The entire nation, Congress, and more than 30,000 victims of J&J's dangerous talc product say no to this flagrant and fraudulent abuse of the bankruptcy system."
The U.S. Department of Justice has challenged Johnson & Johnson's Texas two-step bankruptcy maneuver. If the legal strategy is upheld, it paves the way for every major corporation to avoid liability. So, we wait and see.
Meanwhile, this is a historic day for Johnson and Johnson. This is something that our board has deliberated about for some time. And we really believe that by separating our consumer business into a separate publicly traded company, that it's in the best long term interest of all of our stakeholders.
In September 2022, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would separate its consumer business from its medical device and pharmaceutical companies. The new publicly traded company will be called Kenview. According to the company, its logo represents, quote, scientific precision and the warmth of care. The separation is expected to take place in 2023. Kenview's line of products will feature all the classics, such as Band-Aids and Tylenol, but no talc-based baby powder.
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