This is an investigative journalist’s well-researched and hard-hitting exposure of the evil actions of an American behemoth, Johnson & Johnson. It is the story of how corporate greed can ignore the effects of their products, denying the asbestos risk in baby powder and many other dire consequences resulting from, for example, their Risperdal (used to treat psychosis associated with schizophrenia), the painkiller Tylenol (which caused acute liver failure), and the addictive EPO (which regulates red blood cells). They are accused of hiding known side effects in order to make big money. Their metal-on-metal hip implants resulted in the deaths of many patients. Was the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cozying up to Big Pharma too much? The author goes on, for example, to claim that J&J knew that opioids were addictive and marketed them for chronic pain anyway.
This journalist has undoubtedly spent many years researching the knowing failures of J&J, who wanted to protect their profits; but were they unique in this? One can’t help thinking that this too-detailed account is trying too hard to expose deliberate wrongdoing when perhaps it was simply blinkered wrongdoing.
This is very much a deep-dive account and is often repetitive. It is designed to be disturbing and a ‘must-read’, but, as ever, such journalistic accounts can obscure the real truth. When J&J brought Baby Talc to the market, no one had a clue that asbestos had found its way into the talc when mined. But when, as the author claims, J&J realised that the talc caused ovarian cancer in 30–50% of users, they carried on selling their top product until fifty years later, changing to using corn starch-based powder. In the meantime, thousands of women died from ovarian cancer.
It is a well-known problem in the USA of Big Pharma and the government agencies which regulate it being too close. We are supposed to see J&J as a criminal killing machine. New industry standards are required, but is the whole of Big Pharma corrupt, as the book makes one believe? Is the author just biased? Is the book meant just to shock? Is he trying to create a hysteria frenzy in order to sell books? One needs to take great care over ‘one-sided stories’ which may be little more than conspiracy theories. However, the book certainly makes you think.