Inside the Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder Controversy | Bloomberg Investigates

foreign I think of something innocent it's targeted to babies so it has to be safe and soft and smell good and keep you fresh never but it turned out to be Johnson and Johnson has been accused of knowing of studies that suggested there's a link between using baby powder gently and ovarian cancer Johnson Johnson seems like one of these companies that over the years has had some really serious allegations leveled against it I was skeptical as a lot of people are skeptical J J occupies what I call position and Trust in this country but the more I dug into it the more I looked at the research I said well there's some smoke is there fire and there are many people who say that there's not just fire but it's a wildfire a jury ordering Johnson Johnson to pay a record 4.7 billion dollars over allegations it's iconic baby powder causes cancer the company has faced thousands of lawsuits from customers linking them to cancer we unequivocally believe that our talk our baby powder does not contain asbestos they're trying to kill me they're just trying to kill us why would I have asbestos in my body how did it get here something that was 40 years ago had come back to like J and J there were hundreds of men at any given time taking part in all sorts of human experiments there was a degree of exploitation there that should not be happening I am a legal reporter for Bloomberg news I've been covering Johnson and Johnson since 1997. I started covering the top litigation in 2014. Johnson and Johnson started in the late 1800s it's a health care company it's the world's largest maker of healthcare products it generates 95 billion in annual sales it's one of the largest companies in the world Johnson Johnson has some products that are very well known and very widely used all over the world the baby powder product is one of its iconic brands nature of pads of baby bunny with lots of soft protection your little buddy deserves something just as soft like Suki Johnson's baby powder baby powder first came about in the 1890s Johnson and Johnson is known in some ways as the baby powder company and those white bottles are ubiquitous in American homes and it was used as a desiccant mostly on babies to try and treat diaper rash and other things like that there are some things you just don't give up I get Johnson's baby powder yeah like my Johnson's baby powder the softest there is adults started to use it at some point and they started to use it as a way to control sweat it became especially for women a very very common product that they would use on both their genitals and the rest of their body baby powder used to be made of talc it's basically a silicate based organic compound that grows in the ground it has a very like-minded compound called asbestos that grows in the same places and when you mine talc in many instances you're going to find asbestos there asbestos is a carcinogen a known carcinogen some of its internal documents stretching back to the late 60s and 1970s have j j employees warning their bosses that there are traces of asbestos in the baby powder this was day one after chemo when my hair was starting to come out in the sink and that was going into a surgery wow I just want to cry that time period was so just so I don't even I can't even put in words but it was just something I just said in my mind it's just something you have to go through just keep waking up that was the goal just keep waking up I didn't know I had it it was found on the table for another situation when they opened me up they said it's everywhere closer and put her on chemo and they did what was called a deboking where they took out um all of my organs my uterus my Fallopian tubes my ovaries my spleen some lymph nodes subsequently came back a year later and I had to have another surgery a colon resection and another round of chemo and I've been seven years in remission ever since [Music] The Experience having ovarian cancer is multifaceted the effects of chemo was traumatizing I mean I my doctors warned me that I would lose my hair but I was not prepared to lose my eyebrows and my eyelashes and then my skin color changed I had this like grayish sallow look I was a single mother I had two teenage Sons I recall one time I was cooking and I was exhausted I had no energy I was in pain I'm leaning over the sink and my son walked in and he's like Mom you okay and I had to perk up and put on a face you know because I didn't want him to think I was dying because it was one time he thought I was dead so you know it affects everybody in the family it's not just me Johnson and Johnson baby powder all my life my mother used it on me when I was an infant my first recollection of using it myself was when I was probably around 10 and I started playing baseball my mother you know she sat me down and she had to talk with me you can't be the stinky girl you have to stay fresh and so she taught me how to use it on myself and I always used it after that everything even on my dogs the attorneys had sent me to visit um an asbestos specialist when I was told that there was asbestos found in my lymph node tissue and the asbestos was an exact match to the asbestos that they tested in the bottles of baby powder in my home and I broke down crying because my thought I'm like they're trying to kill me they're just trying to kill us they value money over lives and that's evident my former colleague approached me and said hey have you heard about these out lawsuits many people pointed to research saying that asbestos and the baby powder has been linked to a specific type of cancer tied to asbestos exposure which is mesothelioma other research ties it to ovarian cancer in 2016 we decided to do a deep dive into the top litigation we found that that the top litigation was growing and we found that juries were lining up behind the plaintiff's arguments that J and J had not been forthcoming about the health risks Jackie Fox was a 58 year old resident of Birmingham Alabama she worked in a school cafeteria and cleaned houses on the side to raise money for her family she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and saw an ad on the TV from one of the lawyers who were trying to find cases and so they signed her up and her case went to trial in State Court in St Louis and the jury came back with a total of 72 million dollars in Damages Jackie Foss did not live to see the verdict in her favor she died four months before the verdict came down and she was the first talc victim to be awarded damages I sincerely believe that Johnson Johnson took my mother's life we believed in the company and the product specifically my mother was a true fan it was a staple in our house and a necessary part of our hygienic routine had we known then what we know now we would never brought this into our household [Music] I've been covering the top litigation for going on 10 years and you know it's tiring it's been a ride it's probably the longest case I've ever stuck with in my career these documents are the documents that my source directed me to that have been unsealed as part of the talc litigation first thing it tells us is that jnj hired Dr kliegman to do prison testing at holmesburg prison on prisoners it also tells us that J J was worried about you know their marketing of baby powder as being safe [Music] Albert clegman was very prominent dermatologist on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania here in Philadelphia he was the inventor of Retin-A was a very profitable product and he was somebody who started the prison tested regimen at holmesburg prison [Music] the biggest Revelation to me was that this Dr kliegman one of the safety tests he decided to do was to shave a patch of people's skin and put baby powder on it and shave another patch of the inmates skin and put asbestos on it asbestos is a known carcinogen and these guys took 50 holmesburg prisoners shaved them and put asbestos on their bodies and we're talking about the 60s in the early 70s the today that seems pretty outrageous to me that's like asking people you know I'm going to test the safety of my my drain clear by having you drink some in 1971 I got a job running a literacy program in the Philadelphia County prison system and it was walking in holmesburg House of Correction and the Detention Center the three prisons that made up the jail in Philadelphia that I came across many many shocking things that the average person would be amazed by and one of those was the fact that there were scores of inmates dozens and dozens and dozens of them at each Institution strapped and wrapped in medical tape when I explored it in depth researching it myself decades later the Philadelphia jail was actually a supermarket of investigative opportunity for the pharmaceutical community and the scientific arenas anybody who wanted to know what the impact would be of a medical procedure of a surgical procedure or a new pharmaceutical concoction could ingratiate themselves with Dr Albert kligman the dermatologist who ran the program tell them what the protocol was how much they were willing to pay to have it done as far as I know he never turned anybody down he walks in those big front gates at holmesburg very quickly the light goes on here are hundreds and hundreds of aimless desperate men who could be used for experimentation what we have here he thought we have Acres of skin those experiments run from 1951 to 1974 incorporating thousands of philadelphians in a cross-section of experiments running the gamut from tobacco studies to Johnson and Johnson sanitary napkin studies to chemical studies with dioxin the inmates rarely knew exact what was being applied and I think they were routinely deceived even if you gave them a technical document to read they wouldn't have been able to read it and they're desperate for money if you're lucky enough to get a job pushing a broom on a Cell Block you may make 25 cents or 50 cents a day but if you're a test subject if you're a guinea pig you can make a dollar a day a dollar and a half a day those are princely wages by prison standards my book Acres of skin is published in 1998 and the inmates learn about the holmesburg prison experiments which they knew of but they didn't know what had actually taken place so they were shocked they were alarmed when I went there I had nothing wrong with me I had a perfect bill of help I came out I'm totally deteriorated right now today they're all linking their maladies to the possibility that something nefarious had taken place while they were locked up the inmates have an array of various medical dilemmas that can run from uh that they lost their hair in prison they never got it back some had fingers and hands that had blown up they would have respiratory problems they would spit up blood they would have headaches one of the inmates in particular leotis Jones was one of the first inmates to speak out about the experiments and there's some inmates like uh actually snap went off and that's when we began to like really look at these studies in the very beginning they were relatively simple sometimes it wasn't uh life-threatening and then it got on to become I went on to become more inhumane and more barbaric this is a picture of my father as a baby it's funny because all the babies in the family look like him at that age this is my parents wedding picture my mother was 19 my father was 18. and uh she was pregnant with my brother in this picture I wasn't thought of then I remember him being a quiet person it was out everything he was our protector he was our provider he took care of the family he went to work but after that incarceration it was different my father did not talk to us about the experiments because he was embarrassed about what he allowed himself to go through by participating in experiments and what I mean by that is the physical change and the mental Behavior I remember it was a time when he came out of prison I walked into the room where the door was partly open and I saw his back his shirt was off and I saw sores and it scared me because mind you not I'm about five years old and my young mind said that he was turning into something you know you watch TV watch monsters and stuff like that it was That Hideous I looked at it and I ran I ran from him we've seen holmesburg becoming a house of horror and we've seen the doctors becoming Frankensteins you know and and we felt that you know it had to be stopped before individuals come walking out of their backwards so there's no record of knowing exactly what was used on who and when my father was enraged after Acres of skin came out my father began reaching out to other survivors that he knew that were released he began to communicate with the ones who were still inside letting them know hey we've been played we have to get together and talk about this and see what we want to do about this so they began having meetings they wanted Justice my father and another inmate testified during the Kennedy Senate and they testified as to why they thought the experiments were unethical as a result of that those two inmates out of the 300 got a small compensation I think my father got a forty thousand dollar payout and so did the other guy the other ones were never heard their cases were thrown out by a judge that say the statue of limitations had caused them to not go any further but how do you do that and we're incarcerated [Music] my father never heard an apology that's what he fought for for decades he wanted inmates to get reparations and he wanted them to get Medical Treatments now they were offered medical treatment but they had to go through University of Pennsylvania doctors that wasn't happening you know they already didn't trust it if I think it was like two years after his death and I began advocating and and protesting I went to a March in Philly shortly after that you know I wrote an article to the newspaper and Penn apologized I think it took so long for your apology because there was no accountability everybody did what they did got very rich and walked away not only were the survivors lies affected their families were affected the city of Philadelphia was affected they ate steak dinner off the skin of my dad's back how dare you tell me I can't have a reparation that that's what I asked for okay [Music] foreign started out at under a thousand cases it has grown by a factor of whatever to now 40 000 cases J and J has won at least 15 cases at trial they've also gotten hundreds if not thousands of other cases thrown out pre-trial on the plaintiff side they've won at least 11 cases since 2014. the biggest verdict that they've had came in 2018 when state court and St Louis ruled that J J was liable to 20 women for their ovarian cancer and awarded them a total of 4.7 billion with a B damages on appeal the Missouri State appellate courts cut the verdict from 4.7 to 2.1 Johnson and Johnson realized that they were facing thousands of tout trials coming up and the costs of Defending those cases and the potential that several more billion dollar verdicts could come down the road some people say prompted J and J to come up with a tactic of having these cases handled in bankruptcy court once a company files for bankruptcy or a unit of a company all litigation ceases all the lawsuits are stopped they're frozen in 2023 Federal appeals court decided that J J was not entitled to file that unit put that unit into bankruptcy to resolve the top litigation and through that bankruptcy case out [Music] my reason for being a part of it was to be the champion for little girls so that they wouldn't have to go through what all of us went through as adults so after the verdict came out and I was in the airport going home it was on the news and it was on the televisions in the airport and everyone's gathered around the screens watching the news and amazement and I'm feeling like this cartoon character I used to watch as a kid called Mighty Mouse it was a mouse with a cape and he would put his hands on his hips and I felt like that I felt like a superhero I continue to be fascinated by the story well the end game now most people believe is just a question of how much they're going to pay [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Bloomberg Originals

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Keywords: News, bloomberg, quicktake, business, bloomberg quicktake, quicktake originals, bloomberg quicktake by bloomberg, documentary, mini documentary, mini doc, doc, us news, world news, finance, science

Id: 8Vmv10p9Y44

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2023