Chapter 1: What is the historical significance of Johnson & Johnson in American healthcare?
Hey there, it's Shamita here. I am now out on parental leave. And Sam Sanders, the award-winning podcast and radio host, will be taking over the host chair for a bit while I'm gone. You'll hear him starting next week. But in the meantime, here's an episode from our archives that really stuck with me.
It's a massive investigation that exposes a lot about health care, government oversight, and accountability in America. I hope you enjoy it. This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Shmeeta Basu. Today, the dark secrets of Johnson & Johnson.
From the start of your life, it's been a part of your life.
This is a 1976 ad for Johnson's baby powder.
It's a feeling. For more than a century, the J&J brand has billed itself as one of the most trusted companies in American history.
And baby powder was its most iconic product.
The scent of baby powder is the most recognized fragrance on the planet.
That's investigative journalist Gardner Harris.
It's this extraordinary branding tool because, of course, when you're a baby and you smell this smell, it's delivered to you by your mother, the most important person in your life. So from infancy, you associate this smell with love and trust. And so it's this branding tool that was a shield for Johnson & Johnson forever.
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Chapter 2: How was Johnson & Johnson's baby powder linked to health risks?
But what are some of the major weaknesses that you would say you've identified over the course of your reporting in the way that the FDA works today that have allowed J&J to function in the way that it has and end up causing harm to so many people?
So one sort of larger message that I would love to get across is that in many ways, my book is a guidebook for navigating the healthcare system for you and your family. And what I hope is that the many stories I tell in the book will help people understand
the weak points in the system and make clear to them that some of the people in the system that they think are trustworthy are simply not as trustworthy as they think they are. And that is certainly true of the FDA. As I mentioned, the FDA now is largely funded by industry. And so FDA professionals to this day will say in speeches that their customers
are the industry, not the American public, but the industry. And so in 2012, the industry decided that they weren't going to continue to pay these fees to the FDA. It led the FDA into a panic because if the industry didn't agree to another five-year fee authorization legislation, the FDA was going to have to fire hundreds and hundreds of reviewers.
So the FDA commissioner at the time, Margaret Hamburg, called Alex Gorski, who was then head of Johnson & Johnson's device division, and was about to be appointed its CEO and begged him to save the agency. He then rallied. He created a funding bill for the FDA. He sold it to the industry because Johnson & Johnson is the most powerful player in the industry.
And then he used Johnson & Johnson's vast lobbying network to sell it on Capitol Hill. He saved the FDA. And the FDA then paid Johnson & Johnson back in multiple, multiple ways. One way was by not withdrawing Johnson & Johnson's dangerous metal-on-metal hip implants so that Americans were exposed to this dangerous product for more than a year after Australians, for instance.
They did not withdraw anything. Johnson & Johnson's dangerous vaginal mesh. So hundreds of thousands more women had their lives destroyed by this vaginal mesh that ripped apart their vaginal walls. And FDA then issued a series of statements sometimes seemingly out of the blue to help Johnson & Johnson in its legal problems.
For instance, in 2015, Johnson & Johnson lost its first baby powder case in federal court in North Dakota. Now, FDA had not been paying attention to baby powder for decades. Suddenly, out of the blue, FDA issues a statement attesting to the safety of talc-based cosmetics, even though, of course, FDA hadn't tested any of these products in years.
It even issues an opinion about how wonderful opioids are on the eve of Johnson & Johnson's opioid trial in Oklahoma. So what you see is an agency that is determined and deeply invested in the safety of Johnson & Johnson and doing not only nothing to police this bad behavior, but actually enabling it.
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