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Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

highline.huffingtonpost.com

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Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#11

Post by imperio59 »

werber wrote: post #6
danso wrote: post #5

> “All the big pharmas have lawsuits,” the analyst concluded, sipping an espresso. “It’s just not a big deal.” A list of the $13B in fines paid by pharma companies just in 2009 to 2014: http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma

It looks like the majority are mental health drugs, that's really scary.

That's because these drugs are the mad scientist experiments of a bunch of psychiatrists who are crazier than the patients they pretend to be "helping". If you also look at how many mass shooters were on these drugs which were prescribed off label and caused their violence, you start to realize the real cost on society of these so called "cures".

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#12

Post by thehoff »

danso wrote: post #5

> “All the big pharmas have lawsuits,” the analyst concluded, sipping an espresso. “It’s just not a big deal.” A list of the $13B in fines paid by pharma companies just in 2009 to 2014: http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma

Following through the links to Dollars for Docs:

https://projects.propublica.org/d4d-archive/companies/johnso...

How is this legal? I'm ignorant of the details but for instance, if you click on California and look at Speaking, top of the list doc got $86,550!

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#13

Post by cs702 »

"Tragic" is the only word that does justice to the events described by this article.

The most interesting aspect of the story for me is how the company's culture has changed for the worst over time.

Johnson & Johnson was started and for many decades was run by sincerely idealistic do-no-evil entrepreneurs, who wanted to focus on "patients first and profits last"... but now this business is run by executives who seem to be doing the exact opposite while claiming to abide by the same values.

This is a huge challenge for successful founders: how does one ensure that a company's culture and values don't degrade long after the original team is gone?

The author, Steven Brill, a successful entrepreneur and writer[1], wrote another powerful long-form article about the insanity of healthcare bills in the US a couple of years ago:

http://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killin...

Highly recommended if this is of interest to you.

--

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brill_(journalist)

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#14

Post by thehoff »

werber wrote: post #4

I'm really happy to see quality long-form journalism. Was Highline it's own thing at one point or was it homegrown at the Huffpo?

Reading around looks like it was homegrown, headed up by two people from the New Republic.

From their about page:

"It's a new digital home for an old journalistic tradition. Think of it as a magazine that only runs cover stories—big, ambitious pieces intended to change the way you see the world or influence the course of policy. Investigations will take months, essays will be finely considered, the subjects we choose to write about will feel urgent and essential."

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#15

Post by mfoy_ »

sp332 wrote: post #3
brento wrote: post #2

This looks interesting and I'll bookmark it for later. Does anyone happen to have a TL;DL version for those who don't currently have time to read the whole thing right now?

(This is the first of a series of articles about J&J's regulatory shenanigans.) The Food and Drug Administration had prohibited Johnson & Johnson salespeople from trying to promote Risperdal to doctors to treat children because of its feared side effects, including hormonal disorders. The company was also not allowed to promote it to treat the elderly except for the most serious psychotic disorders; it was thought to…

(TL;DR of the TL;DR)

J&J pushed their dangerous pills aggressively, illegally, and unapologetically. They targeted children and seniors.

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#16

Post by aggie »

LordKano wrote: post #10
jonstokes wrote: post #9

The tragedy here goes far beyond the direct damage to the patents who were prescribed this vile stuff off-label. There's also the collateral damage to the medical establishment that supports this -- can anyone argue that the anti-vaxxers don't have a point when they're on about exactly this sort of profit-driven evil from Big Pharma? I myself am an anti-anti-vaxxer (a pro-vaxxer?) who actually supports state-mandated…

The anti-vaxxers would have a point even if J&J wasn't involved in shady activity. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I was vaccinated. I had my children vaccinated. I just hold the position that the power of the state shouldn't be used to compel people to inject substances into their bodies, even if we think we have a good reason for doing it. I'm not looking to delve too deeply into the politics of it but there are good reas…

Vaccination is not an onerous requirement and there is very good reason to believe it is beneficial to public health when widely administered. If you want to reject it on principle alone, you'll have to address why your liberty in principle is more important than my health concern in practice.

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#17

Post by Retra »

LordKano wrote: post #10
jonstokes wrote: post #9

The tragedy here goes far beyond the direct damage to the patents who were prescribed this vile stuff off-label. There's also the collateral damage to the medical establishment that supports this -- can anyone argue that the anti-vaxxers don't have a point when they're on about exactly this sort of profit-driven evil from Big Pharma? I myself am an anti-anti-vaxxer (a pro-vaxxer?) who actually supports state-mandated…

The anti-vaxxers would have a point even if J&J wasn't involved in shady activity. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I was vaccinated. I had my children vaccinated. I just hold the position that the power of the state shouldn't be used to compel people to inject substances into their bodies, even if we think we have a good reason for doing it. I'm not looking to delve too deeply into the politics of it but there are good reas…

Given that the whole purpose of a state is to compel people to do things, I'm wondering what basis you have for drawing the line there. Or why a simple waiver process wouldn't be sufficient to handle those who object.

In general, I would argue that a state has the authority to compel someone into doing anything that has been sufficiently demonstrated to be a good decision, and so the onus is on the anti-vaxxer to show that receiving a vaccine is in fact not a good decision in their case (because it has been shown to be valuable in general.)

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#18

Post by danso »

thehoff wrote: post #12
danso wrote: post #5

> “All the big pharmas have lawsuits,” the analyst concluded, sipping an espresso. “It’s just not a big deal.” A list of the $13B in fines paid by pharma companies just in 2009 to 2014: http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma

Following through the links to Dollars for Docs: https://projects.propublica.org/d4d-archive/companies/johnso... How is this legal? I'm ignorant of the details but for instance, if you click on California and look at Speaking, top of the list doc got $86,550!

It's legal in the way that celebrity/professional endorsement is legal in any other field. It's not inherently wrong, and you would expect that an ostensibly effective product would be touted by respected professionals. And just to be clear, when speaking for the product, the doctors generally must stick to the company's slides and official talking points -- though the doctors have final say over what they present [1].

This is again, not necessarily evil -- in fact, it's a logical continuation of the law which mandates that companies only promote their drugs exactly and only for what FDA regulations approved the drugs for. The problem, as presented in the OP, is when doctors unofficially (i.e personally) endorse/promote/heavily prescribe drugs for off-label uses. Again, not an illegal thing on its own, as doctors are trusted to prescribe what a patient needs based on their professional judgment (or else, Dr. "House, M.D." would be in prison)...but the worry is that a financial relationship with a company (i.e. the payments for touting the official line) have the potential to taint a doctor's professional judgment.

[disclosure: I used to work at ProPublica and on the Dollars for Docs project]

[1] http://www.propublica.org/article/double-dip-doctors-paid-to...

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#19

Post by sp332 »

aggie wrote: post #16
LordKano wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-vaxxers would have a point even if J&J wasn't involved in shady activity. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I was vaccinated. I had my children vaccinated. I just hold the position that the power of the state shouldn't be used to compel people to inject substances into their bodies, even if we think we have a good reason for doing it. I'm not looking to delve too deeply into the politics of it but there are good reas…

Vaccination is not an onerous requirement and there is very good reason to believe it is beneficial to public health when widely administered . If you want to reject it on principle alone, you'll have to address why your liberty in principle is more important than my health concern in practice.

It could still be a civil suit - if someone actually got sick because you weren't vaccinated, they could sue you for damages.

Also, once you give the government the authority to require people to be injected, they will probably start expanding it in various directions. That's really not a power I want to give to them.

Re: Johnson and Johnson, America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

#20

Post by agentgt »

My mother was a pharmaceutical sales rep for many years where she did rather well despite her age most likely because she was previously a RN. I say age because the pharma companies blatantly hire "sexy and young" to sell to doctors. Now I'm sure there are other companies that age and appearance discriminate but the pharma companies are especially egregious in that they really don't care if the sales person is qualified or not.

And this is important because the doctors rarely have time to do research on the samples that they were given. So its sort of a good thing to give the doctor as much info as possible but this rarely happens as pharma sales person Barbie and Ken could care less.

Pharma sales have strict compliance but guess who enforces those compliances? The pharma companies. Not the FDA. So guess what they use the compliance issues for... to get rid of older employees or to screw over other companies (ie tattle telling).

Its completely fucked up.

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