Product News and Recalls

Writer wonders if even Don Draper could help J&J

An entry on blog ThePopTort.com mentions Don Draper, the preternaturally slick ad executive at the center of AMC’s Mad Men, and wonders whether even he would be able to help Johnson & Johnson these days.

“Last week watching Mad Men, when I heard Don Draper’s pitch to Dow Chemical about the wonders of Napalm (coincidently just as the country was recognizing the 40th anniversary of that iconic photo), I thought, ‘wow, if Don Draper were alive today – er, I mean a fictional TV character today – have I gotta company for him’!” the entry says.

The writer, identified as “Joe Consumer,” mentions the recent Bloomberg report that Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay as much as $2.2 billion to settle U.S. probes of the marketing of its Risperdal antipsychotic drug and other medications. The settlement will reportedly include a misdemeanor plea and criminal penalty of as much as $600 million. It would resolve civil claims that Johnson & Johnson paid kickbacks to a company that dispenses drugs at nursing homes.

“Joe Consumer” notes that the settlement report is just the latest in a series of recent news stories that cast the company in an unfavorable light.

“This comes on the heels of the company agreeing to stop selling vaginal mesh implants, which it improperly put on the market … and which subsequently injured or killed hundreds of women,” the entry states.

The also company faces over 6,000 lawsuits from patients severely harmed after receiving a DePuy Orthpaedics all-metal artificial hip implant. The company recalled 93,000 of the implants worldwide in 2010, including 37,000 in the U.S., because more than 12 percent of the devices failed within five years.

In the past two years alone, Johnson & Johnson has been involved with a number of high-profile product recalls, as well as legal cases alleging that the company paid bribes and kickbacks to win business overseas, ignored federally mandated manufacturing standards and knowingly marketed dangerous products.

See the blog entry here:

https://www.thepoptort.com/2012/06/johnson-johnson-a-tall-order-even-for-don-draper.html