Did Johnson & Johnson put profit over safety?

USA Today

22-05-2025

Did Johnson & Johnson put profit over safety? | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on May 21, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: 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.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 21st, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. 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, as has its iconic Band-Aids and talcum powder. But it's that last item, the talcum powder that may prove to be a tipping point in destroying its hard-won 139 year-old reputation with consumers. To find out why, we're now joined by author and freelance investigative journalist, Gardiner Harris, his new book, No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson is on bookshelves now. Gardiner, thanks for joining me.
Gardiner Harris:
Thanks for having me, Dana.
Dana Taylor:
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?
Gardiner Harris:
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 come away and find ways to protect themselves, not only against Johnson & Johnson, but against corruption writ large in American healthcare.
Dana Taylor:
So can you give us some of the evidence that you uncovered specifically as relates to baby powder?
Gardiner Harris:
Sure. So talc and asbestos are chemically identical. They have the same exact constituencies. And 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. 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 & Johnson began to understand this problem in the 1950s and the 1960s. Now, in the fifties and sixties, these small contaminations, and these tests showed that up to three 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 a big deal.
But science began to discover in the 1960s and 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 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 & Johnson saw this research. Nearly all other companies that were using talcum powders got away from talcum powders and substituted in cornstarch. Johnson & 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, who are blaming their illnesses, and in some cases the death of their loved ones, on their use of Johnson's Baby Powder.
Dana Taylor:
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?
Gardiner Harris:
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 try 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.
Dana Taylor:
Gardiner, 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?
Gardiner Harris:
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 first tries to 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 name secret.
Dana Taylor:
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?
Gardiner Harris:
There is a lot of evidence that Johnson & Johnson knew that the poisoning probably happened somewhere in their own distribution system, and that they kept that knowledge from not only the public, but investigators themselves. 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.
Dana Taylor:
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?
Gardiner Harris:
Dana, you and I are both reporters. I was a reporter at the highest levels of media, becoming a White House correspondent for the New York Times, but we fail the American public all too often. And I think the story of Johnson & Johnson is one of our greatest failures. It is essentially, a killer in our midst that we fail to warn the public about. Now, I tried a couple of times, but this is a very difficult story to tell. It's a complicated story. It needed a book to show its sweep. And I felt like it was partly my responsibility that this company had been allowed to behave so badly for so long without anyone knowing about it. Because I was one of the top drug reporters in the country, and so I left daily journalism to write this book, and it took me basically six years to get it done.
Dana Taylor:
And finally, your book was released last month. How has J&J responded?
Gardiner Harris:
So far, crickets. Haven't heard from them, which is not at all unusual. I covered the company at the Wall Street Journal, at the New York Times. For tough stories, Johnson & Johnson has historically refused to participate in any of these stories. And I actually tell story after story in the book about Johnson & Johnson managing to kill some very critical stories over the course of its history, by calling up headquarters of these big media conglomerates. And because Johnson & Johnson was one of the largest advertisers in the world, was able to threaten these organizations, "If you run this piece, we will pull all of our ads." And again and again, that succeeded in having critical stories about the company killed. So the company has been very successful by these backdoor mechanisms of keeping its brand pristine. That has not happened in this case. They have not responded, and I don't really expect them ever to.
Dana Taylor:
We reached out to Johnson & Johnson for comment on Harris's investigation, and they issued a statement saying, "We stand by the safety of our products and are focused on what we do best, delivering medical innovation for patients around the world." Investigative journalist, Gardiner Harris's new book is called No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, and it's on bookshelves now. Gardiner, thanks for being on The Excerpt.
Gardiner Harris:
I'm thrilled to be here, and thanks for inviting me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our Senior Producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our Executive Producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [e-mail]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.