Please consider a Reuters special report: J&J knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder.
Darlene Coker knew she was dying. She just wanted to know why. She knew that her cancer, mesothelioma, arose in the delicate membrane surrounding her lungs and other organs. She knew it was as rare as it was deadly, a signature of exposure to asbestos.
Fighting for every breath and in crippling pain, Coker hired Herschel Hobson, a personal-injury lawyer. He homed in on a suspect: the Johnson’s Baby Powder that Coker had used on her infant children and sprinkled on herself all her life. Hobson knew that talc and asbestos often occurred together in the earth, and that mined talc could be contaminated with the carcinogen. Coker sued Johnson & Johnson, alleging that “poisonous talc” in the company’s beloved product was her killer.
J&J denied the claim. Baby Powder was asbestos-free, it said. As the case proceeded, J&J was able to avoid handing over talc test results and other internal company records Hobson had requested to make the case against Baby Powder.
Coker had no choice but to drop her lawsuit, Hobson said. “When you are the plaintiff, you have the burden of proof,” he said. “We didn’t have it.”
That was in 1999. Two decades later, the material Coker and her lawyer sought is emerging as J&J has been compelled to share thousands of pages of company memos, internal reports and other confidential documents with lawyers for some of the 11,700 plaintiffs now claiming that the company’s talc caused their cancers — including thousands of women with ovarian cancer. A Reuters examination of many of those documents, as well as deposition and trial
testimony, shows that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that 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.
Junk Science or Junk Baby Powder?
That’s the backdrop of a very long report. J&J calls the report “junk science”, but asbestos, like many environmental carcinogens, has a long latency period. Diagnosis usually comes years after initial exposure – 20 years or longer for mesothelioma.
There are other contaminants in J&J’s baby powder as well. Reuters mentions tremolite which also has small fibrous “cleavage fragments”.
In 1967, J&J found traces of tremolite and another mineral that can occur as asbestos, according to a table attached to a Nov. 1, 1967, memo by William Ashton, the executive in charge of J&J’s talc supply for decades.
Asbestos Free?
In the early 1970s JNJ sent samples of its baby powder to independent labs. Hand-picked samples perhaps?
The samples came back as asbestos-free but they did contain tremolite, which J&J did not disclose.
Getting Rid of the Tremolite
Tom Shelley, director of J&J’s Central Research Laboratories in New Jersey, was looking into acquiring patents on a process that a British mineralogist and J&J consultant was developing to separate talc from tremolite.
“It is quite possible that eventually tremolite will be prohibited in all talc,” Shelley wrote on Feb. 20, 1973, to a British colleague. Therefore, he added, the “process may well be valuable property to us.”
JNJ Sought License to Kill
JNJ never got those patent rights. Instead, J&J pressed the FDA to approve an X-ray scanning technique that a company scientist said in an April 1973 memo allowed for “an automatic 1% tolerance for asbestos.” That would mean talc with up to 10 times the FDA’s proposed limit for asbestos in drugs could pass muster.
Having failed to persuade the FDA that up to 1 percent asbestos contamination was tolerable, J&J began promoting self-policing as an alternative to regulation.
What’s that if not seeking a license to kill?
Misrepresentation by Omission
JNJ hid for decades the fact that its baby powder contained asbestos-like substances.
In June of 2018, JNJ lost a big case.
“Providing the FDA favorable results showing no asbestos and withholding or failing to provide unfavorable results, which show asbestos, is a form of a misrepresentation by omission,” Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Ana Viscomi said in her June ruling.
A quick search for Judge Ana Viscomi shows there are over 1,300 Asbestos Claims in her NJ court.
Insufficient Penalty
Johnson and Johnson was slammed 10% today.
That’s not an appropriate penalty. Its CEO and top executives ought to be in prison if the charges are true, and I believe they are.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Is baby powder the stuff LeBron throws in the air at the beginning of games? if so, I see another deep pocket the lawyers can go after.
I am no fan of J&J but a little perspective is in order here. J&J baby powder has been around since 1893. T’s been used on how many hundreds of millions of baby’s , kids and adults over the century plus of its availability? There are about 3,000 cases of mesothelioma a year, most due to known exposures such as shipbuilding decades ago. The rate at which ovarian cancer has been diagnosed has been decreasing slightly over the past twenty years according to the American Cancer Society, I suspect in part because of the use of oral contraceptives which seem to have a protective effect.
J&J may be guilty of hiding facts; however, the facts themselves may be of little consequence. Just remember, J&J has deep pockets and tort lawyers love deep pockets.
Trump just approved the reintroduction of asbestos into various products, so clearly it isn’t a problem. Fake news!
Johnson’s baby powder doesn’t work anyway. I’ve been sprinkling it on my wife every morning for years and still no baby!
The safest car? Man from Citroen said it – one made of glass with a large metal spike in the centre of the steering wheel pointed at the driver. Suddenly accident rates would collapse.
That needs to be the case for politicians, business leaders etc.
Unfortunately it’s those self same people making the rules.
imprisoning CEO and top officials are not in our hands! What can we do? Stop using J&J products with immediate effect and spread this informaation to all the dear ones you know and care about! Teach them a lesson.
So long as something is legal it’s thought of as OK.
Legality can be a very wide door to pass through whereas sticking to your values, acting ethically and with personal responsibility is a narrow passage.
That’s why lobbying and regulatory capture is so disgusting –
widening the door.
There’s a parable in there somewhere.
This is one of the fundamental pillars of progressivism: Turning legality vs morality on its head. Traditionally, laws and morals coincided because the laws which were written and enforced, were closely related to very old, universal moral codes. The Ten Commandments being a prime example.
The progressives, naive and dumb as always, reckoned they could flip the causality on it’s head, allowing them carte blanche to transform age old societal moral codes, simply by coming up with childish processes for making up and enforcing new “laws.” Like all else they ever did with their pathetic little lives, of course the only result was greater access to arbitrary rule by arbitrary rulers, along with a population in ever greater bondage.
Very much agree. Modern law & regulation does not mean you are acting “rightly” just because you are law abiding and within the rules.
Modern man forgets he must die and give account of himself. Every intention, motive, thought & word. If that was understood a little better the world would be a different place with fewer decisions made prioritising capital returns over acting rightly. Fewer cover-up etc.
Long before the curtain finally comes down on the shitshow known as “Corporate America”, everyone will wish they were Amish.
I knew some Amish and Mennonite kids back when I was in elementary and early middle school. Back then (1980s) I felt bad for them because the outfits weren’t cool and I couldn’t imagine life without computer games.
In retrospect I still doubt they were right, but I get the logic of what they were trying to do. I also respect how Amish teenagers are given some time to decide whether they want to fully commit to the community or leave. That free will choice makes their bond stronger.
Not sure shunning people is right though.
I’d buy furniture, but not a dog from the Amish.
It could be that implementing the technology to ensure that your talc is 100% free of carcinogens would make the talc too expensive for the market. So do we just get rid of talc? Or do we accept a few deaths? It’s like guns and cars. We are willing to accept 10’s of thousands of deaths a year to ensure we maintain a market for guns and cars. Heck, We still sell cigarettes. Cheap living standards and lots of goodies don’t come without risk.
The product should have it’s contents printed on the packaging so consumers can decide. We all know cars kill. How many would guess talc can if the allegations prove true?
Feeling lucky? Want to risk your kids?
“May contain asbestos” on the packaging.
Guess what happens, no sales.
That would be the free market in action.
Regulatory capture, lobbying, manipulation of test results – sounds like VW? That’s not a free market.
Crony business practices when the consumer is the pasty. Disgusting.
Banks, just the same.
caradoc has it exactly. There should be full disclosure. Very few people would use talc if they realized it contained asbestos.
JNJ is a medical company and as such, they are required to disclose carcinogens in their products. If their products cause deaths based on information they had and did not disclose, that is not the same as your examples. Does anyone not realize a gun or a car can kill or at leadt cause serious injury? Is anyone using either while under the impression they cannot cause harm?
It’s fundamentally flawed to “require” that a manufacturer disclose anything, as they are about as far from a non-interested party as can be found anywhere.
Instead, let makers put whatever junk they think they can get away with out there, and leave testing and reporting to independent agencies.
The latter do not currently exist in large numbers for consumer product testing, specifically because laws and other nonsense pretending salesguys can somehow be trusted, if only there are enough yahoos chasing the ambulances they ride around in.
What you want, are independent labs, whose explicit mission is to drum up notoriety and credibility for independence, by being the first to report on absolutely anything that may help “destroy the capitalists.” They would have found asbestos in talc in about the time it takes a high school chemistry student to come down from his first LSD high.
And shouted about it from the rooftops. Even if they were wrong, in which case other labs would be unable to reproduce their findings. Over time, reputations for accuracy would be built, and people would make purchasing decisions based on those. Rather than on what some lawyer tells some salesman he can legally get away with calling “contains no asbestos,” based on standards set by a “work group;” consisting of the manufacturer, along with a government panel chaired by the Senator the manufacturer just helped get elected.
You always, always, want complete freedom. To make and sell what you want, but also to trashtalk and attempt to destroy the lives and livelihoods of anyone you feel like. For any reason. Noone should be protected by regulation, even in the slightest. People are willing to pay for truths pertaining to their own safety. And government and truth should never, ever, be even uttered in the same sentence.
That is anarchy. People suffer.
This is also the appropriate role of the retailer. We’re not going to be able to judge every product presented to us, but we can make some general conclusions about the overall trustworthiness of a retail establishment.
Anecdotically, for example, I’m far more likely to trust a product I find at Costco than a similar product at Whole Foods or Walmart, only because I trust Costco’s desire to maintain a reputation for middle-class quality. And for certain I’m going to check the feedback ratings on eBay sellers, even though they’re hardly perfect indicators, and if any have negative feedback I’m not going to buy from them.
Eventually we’ll get back to retail gatekeeping but we have to get over our obsession with lowest price and understand value added by trustworthy advisors. That works both directions though, so retailers have to step up their games too. Maybe go with a concierge or waitstaff model, where the retailer acts as an agent for us (and doesn’t spit in our dinner).
I agree with this, but would also point out that product liability is a major restriction on what a business is willing to sell. If there is indeed asbestos in J&J Baby powder, I’m sure J&J will be bankrupt in short order. And, that is why businesses try not to sell unsafe products.
Potential product liability is a far more effective restraint than regulation can ever be. In fact, regulation is counter-productive since it actually provides a defense to a product liability lawsuit. “Regulation permits .01% asbestos, and we met that limit, so your suit is without merit, even if you died from it”.
“That’s not an appropriate penalty. Its CEO and top executives ought to be in prison if the charges are true, and I believe they are.”
I agree the problem is that in the USA corporations are “individuals” and therefore the penalty goes to the entity and not the people running it. Even then, the individuals use millions from the company to defend themselves. Even if they are let go, they end up with huge separation packages. Yes the system is broken to the core.
That corporations are legal entities separate from the officers is actually a good thing on balance. Otherwise no one would incorporate if they had to be directly responsible for the billions of decisions made daily in a corporate environment. Not to mention be on the hook for all the debts of the corporation personally.
Just look at the long term effects of the modest executive responsibility requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley: the number of new public companies cratered almost immediately, most founders shifting focus to acquisition-friendly models because just the reporting requirements opened the door to executive liability that wasn’t able to be absorbed by the business. Big corporations suddenly had a lot more presidents and vice presidents who were once directors and managers. And the unseen effects will never really be known. We might even have more than two smartphone operating systems, or lots of electric cars companies instead of one poorly run crony business.
The problem with a lot of corporate profit is that their activities turn out to be profitable only when you leave out the hidden costs (clean up and reparations). Adam Smith already expressed the fact that in a competitive market, it is extremely difficult to realize a profit. Almost all corporations that grow large enough are handicapping the scale in some way, and their profits turn out to be the bezel from screwing others, no matter how much they praise “free markets” in public discourse. Big business is seldom freedom loving.
I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but when stories like this prove true, I understand why some people are believers. The allegations sound credible at this point.
It’s only money. Not one person all those years saw fit to come forward to expose at least what was known about the possible contamination? Very sad.
NOT a word on this news at WSJ digital edition, as of now! Wow!
Do JNJ have an ad budget with WSJ or friends in there?
JNJ stands close to UNION CARBIDE disaster in India, in terms of willful negligence and genocide. But the executives will go scot free just like Banksters!