Trust for sale

How J&J was peddling not just baby powder but also lies that cost many lives

- Soma Das

BABY FACE, and bloodied hands do not go together, but that's the portrait American journalist Gardiner Harris draws of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the US-based pharma and health giant, in his meticulously researched book The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson. Maker of Johnson baby powder and other baby products, the quintessential American company knew that its 'baby history' lends its brand a level of trust that is beyond rational—that's emotional, almost comparable to a bond between a mother and her baby. Not surprising then that despite commanding less than 1% of revenues in recent years, the baby products were treated as its golden egg. "Trust is Our Product," announced an internal deck.

Deeply disturbing is the account Harris convincingly presents on how the company betrayed that 'trust', deliberately lying about health benefits of its drugs, hiding harmful effects of its drugs and devices repeatedly over decades, manipulating results of clinical trials, perfectly aware that these missteps could be killing thousands and injuring millions.

Fine-grain talcum powder, originally used to come from mines often contaminated with asbestos. Through the Sixties and Eighties, journals on pediatrics warned that many children were inhaling too much powder that blocked air sacs of lungs, at times proving fatal. By the 1980s, one in a hundred calls to national poison centers in the US involved children inhaling excessive powder. Eventually, asbestos was declared a carcinogen causing lung and ovarian cancer. Harris uses internal mails, court-room testimonies, and other documents to prove that the company pressured scientists, experts, who suggested that the company's talc was contaminated with asbestos minerals. Scientists have been indicating for decades that women dusting talc on the crotch had much higher chances of developing ovarian cancer.