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Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

reuters.com

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Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#41

Post by lifeisstillgood »

The legal discovery process is an interesting one here - we are seeing documents almost 50 years old here, paper records of what, prima facie is damning behaviour.

But who keeps records for fifty years any more? My BigCo Employers delete my mails after a quarter usually. The idea of my emails being dragged up in 20 years is crazy

Edit: I meant to say that new practises like deleting emails are likely to ensure that crimes like this but happening today may well not get discovered, or at least prosecuted.

Good audit trails are vital for justice - and by deleting them are we just encouraging fake news - a lack of trust in what did happen? I have a suspicion that deleting ones organisational memory is likely to be more destructive

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#42

Post by wongarsu »

lordnacho wrote: post #36
cabalamat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not saying I have an answer The answer must involve making the risks outweigh the benefits, through both an increased probability of being caught and a higher level of punishment.

That's the target, but how do you reach it without creating more issues? Say you have a stringent approval process run by a government agency. Well that takes time. If the product actually works fine you've lost out on the benefits in the meantime.

You can get most of the benefit by testing the product after it hits the market and hit those found harmful with high punishments. Bonus points if not just the company is liable but someone in higher management can be personally held liable.

Testing before it hits the market is safer, but giving compliance departments enough incentive to care gets you 95% of the way.

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#43

Post by bitreality »

snek wrote: post #28
lordnacho wrote: post #14

We shouldn't be surprised that this sort of thing happens from time to time. What are the incentives? If you're an exec in charge of some product, you want to sell the product. You don't want to be pulling it, you'll never get promoted like that. And you know more about how to move product than about asbestos testing results, that's for sure. And chances are nothing will be discovered. And if it is discovered it will…

> you want to sell the product but if it has a carcinogen in it? do you really still want to? i fail to understand how humans can behave like this.

The system is designed for humans to behave like this. Big corporations allow blame to be diluted across an entire organization, meaning you face very little individual risk as an employee of the company. Furthermore, the employee's job and compensation depend on making the company money.

You do not make money by avoiding a catastrophe that could cost a company money. If you avoid a potential future lawsuit by removing the asbestos, how does that look on a company balance sheet? Looks like you spent money removing the asbestos, but there is no gain from avoiding the lawsuit.

So unless the employee feels the lawsuit is inevitable and imminent, why bother? It's just going to hurt the bottom line and provide no increase in revenue. Even worse, if the public catches on to you fixing the problem, then that could expose the problem existed in the first place.

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#44

Post by rmrfrmrf »

schaefer wrote: post #40
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22

Everybody knew? Talc deposits often occur near asbestos deposits. There's a govt standard for 'cosmetic' talc that addresses asbestos content, that's been around since 1973.

Yep, here in Nevada, we have naturally occurring asbestos near some of our most popular water recreation areas [1]. I know one gov. employee that is required to wear a full hazmat suit to go to the beach if they're on the clock. On the weekends, they wear a regular swimsuit... "Asbestos" is a scary word to some, just like "radiation" is to others. but unless the discussion includes concentration levels we're not disc…

Isn't that kind of irrelevant though since asbestos is only a problem when it's airborne?

I mean the whole thing with baby powder is that it's practically designed to be aerosolized.

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#45

Post by armitron »

fma wrote: post #25
r_singh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big corps who can do anything to capture market share and have some sort leverage over the Government cannot be trusted. I guess people just forget about all ethics when huge debt / investment / incentive is involved. Leverage over media and governments along with an army of lawyers and bean counters just makes this whole thing possible. Meanwhile globalisation has arguably made it more difficult for SMEs to market /…

This is a big reason why I'm for regulation when it comes to health, and environment. Somehow conservative Americans are believed that the 'invisible hand of the market' will solve all problems. But companies will always be in it to make money if they feel they can get away with cutting corners. Would we rather err on cutting a few percent here and there from company profits due to overhead and inefficiency of regula…

We saw how the 'invisible hand of the market' played out in the housing collapse of 2008. Even the clown known as Alan Greenspan admitted that his ideology was shaken.

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#46

Post by jasongill »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22

Everybody knew? Talc deposits often occur near asbestos deposits. There's a govt standard for 'cosmetic' talc that addresses asbestos content, that's been around since 1973.

Did you read the entire article? The FDA was guided by J&J to set the standard at 10x higher than their original proposal, and to reduce testing to an inexpensive test that only detects the least common type of asbestos. Basically, the article contends, the standard that "everybody knew" about is meaningless and was not much more than positive press for J&J.

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#47

Post by jasongill »

cm2187 wrote: post #21

When I read about something like that, I’d like to hear more than “traces of”. I’d like to see concentrations and levels of concentrations from which it is considered toxic. Products can even have traces of radioactive material while being harmless.

Did you read the article? They explain that "traces of" was actually as high as 3% in some samples. The bulk of the article explains the tests performed over time including the results of concentration. Not sure what your complaint is, they even link to the original test result documents.

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#48

Post by rightbyte »

cm2187 wrote: post #21

When I read about something like that, I’d like to hear more than “traces of”. I’d like to see concentrations and levels of concentrations from which it is considered toxic. Products can even have traces of radioactive material while being harmless.

I guess that the asbestos rate in the talk follows some none normal distribution. Of all the million bottles, some might have vastly higher rates? I imagine the asbestos is unevenly distributed in the ore in the mine and thus in the resulting batches of talk.

That could be a hypothesis at least. But I agree on the proportion point. I would want to know how much asbestos there is in Kellog's Cornflakes or whatever.

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#49

Post by [deleted] »

lordnacho wrote: post #14

We shouldn't be surprised that this sort of thing happens from time to time. What are the incentives? If you're an exec in charge of some product, you want to sell the product. You don't want to be pulling it, you'll never get promoted like that. And you know more about how to move product than about asbestos testing results, that's for sure. And chances are nothing will be discovered. And if it is discovered it will…

[deleted]

Re: Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

#50

Post by [deleted] »

learc83 wrote: post #35
lordnacho wrote: post #14

We shouldn't be surprised that this sort of thing happens from time to time. What are the incentives? If you're an exec in charge of some product, you want to sell the product. You don't want to be pulling it, you'll never get promoted like that. And you know more about how to move product than about asbestos testing results, that's for sure. And chances are nothing will be discovered. And if it is discovered it will…

Will it make money? Will it kill people? If the answers are yes, and not too many, most companies will go ahead.

[deleted]
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