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Johnson and Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder
- atburrow 8y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18684384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18684384
- vonseel 8y agoI would like to highlight this comment and HN policy on reposts: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html Particularly, this article received significant attention just in the last few days and should be removed as a duplicate.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- smartstuff 8y agogood
- rasengan 8y agoWhen companies like Marriott and JJ are doing things like this, people incur great losses and there is little to no repurcussion to the companies. Meanwhile, some guy in the street will go to prison for selling some weed. All those who did this at JJ honestly deserves a life sentence at a minimum given abestos exposure leads to mesothelioma. This is some diabolical stuff - something out of a movie, akin to for example contaminating the water supply in Batman. So evil.
- r_singh 8y agoBig 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 / sell products in industries within which big corps have huge interests.
- rasengan 8y agoAny government that is susceptible to leverage outside of the POWER OF THE PEOPLE needs to go to jail/be impeached if they succumb to said leverage. Their only duty, their only fiduciary, their only constituent is WE THE PEOPLE as a collective. It is not Johnson and Johnson. That said, we live in an odd time. Supposedly we don’t negotiate with terrorists and let hostages die, but we are sending millions of weapons to a country who is known and proven to fund terror and extrajudicial assassinations.
- Swizec 8y ago> Their only duty, their only fiduciary, their only constituent is WE THE PEOPLE as a collective But their re-election hinges on campaign funds and big companies contribute way more than we the people.
- fma 8y agoThis 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 regulation? Or err on harming people and the planet?
- armitron 8y agoWe 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.
- paulpauper 8y agoIt's not like one person is to blame who maliciously put asbestos with the intent to hurt people. Rather is was just ignorance about the dangers, general incompetence, and possibly some greed. No one person to blame.
- rasengan 8y agoI disagree. During this time period was when case hunters were pretty serious about asbestos. You could not watch tv for a second without seeing an “asbestos exposure? We can help!” commercial. Meanwhile, google ads HIGHEST keywords throughout this period was relating to asbestos and mesothelioma exposure. It was a big thing and well known. Lastly, a company like JJ not only has a responsibility and cannot feign ignorance, but also in their own words have lots of scientists and PHDS. So since they cannot feign ignorance, you can blame them. Anyone who chooses their own well being over millions of BABIES needs to suffer great consequences.
- sacheendra 8y agoYou can blame ppl for being greedy. The executives for employing ignorant ppl. Lots of blame to go around.
- foolrush 8y agoMakes these stories more relevant. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/business/johnson-talc-cancer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/business/johnson-talc-can... Almost as if the “free market” doesn’t regulate itself and generate ethical results...
- refurb 8y agoYou realize that the FDA (regulator) was award of these results and still didn’t pull it off the market?
- duncan-donuts 8y agoOh damn I hadn’t seen that the FDA knew about it as well. That brings this to a whole new level of fucked up.
- andrepd 8y agoYes, because the so-called "regulators" are in the hands of the companies which they are supposed to supervise. It's a complete perversion.
- refurb 8y agoAs someone who has worked with the FDA I find this laughable. The FDA has very few qualms about bringing the full force of the US govt down on a company. Maybe, just maybe, the situation is a little more complex than you realize?
- ekianjo 8y agoDon't forget to include the regulators in your argument, since they were also heavily involved. So much for "the free market".
- foolrush 8y agoThat is somewhat of my point; the market actually dictates this abusive behaviour and endorses it. All that matters is profit at all costs. Even if hit with fines, the entity can likely carry on existing because profit permits survival. Regulation needs to require prison for the white collars involved. If we stop to think about what people are serving time in prison for at this moment, and comparative impact, it is shameful. The people who willingly perpetuated this in the name of profit will continue to have the right to vote, while someone in prison for marijuana may not.
- ekianjo 8y agoDouble posting. It was just on HN yesterday.
- r_singh 8y agoI missed it yesterday and didn't search for it before submitting so that's my bad. But if it's getting upvotes, I guess it's because other people missed it as well.
- lordnacho 8y agoWe 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 take a long time and you'll be long gone. And if it turns out to be really bad, you don't personally pay. The company pays. Not saying I have an answer. I'm sure there's quite a few people within a company that would know about the findings, and they all have reasons to either keep things going, or you could call it a psychological bias towards diminishing the severity in their own minds.
- cabalamat 8y ago> 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.
- lordnacho 8y agoThat'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.
- wongarsu 8y agoYou 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.
- pmichaud 8y agoOne thing I am confused about (maybe more like suspicious about) is why fines for stuff like this aren't more onerous. There are lots of businesses that just factor in the cost of the fines which are way less than the total margin. If I were designing regulations like this, and I actually had the goal of curtailing this sort of behavior, the fines would be tied to the total revenue of the product, like (total revenue + capital gains) * 1.25 (where the .25 is the punitive fine %) That way there's no business tradeoff except "if we get caught, we're fucked". Like, in this situation the fine would be all the revenue ever made with the product for 40 years, and whatever interest they could reasonably calculate, times some proportional punitive amount. J&J would maybe be looking at a bankruptcy for it. It may be too much, but I'd also be tempted to look into criminal charges for anyone with fiduciary responsibility related to the breach. So like the people who were directly responsible are charged criminally, but also their manager, and that person's manager, and so on up to the CEO. If line workers doing shady things could blow back into jail time for CEOs, certainly CEOs would be way more interested in making certain that everything was on the up and up. Just build in corrective procedures like a window for disclosure to law enforcement or regulators if something shady is discovered internally, to give the company a chance to correct the situation if there's a rogue actor or whatever. I know the idea is impractical in a variety of ways, and as a person who has run organizations of various sizes it scares me to contemplate because I know first hand that people just do dumb shit sometimes and I can't always stop it. But the incentives do feel too far the "it's easy and profitable to get away with" side.
- sschueller 8y agoIf people started tossing J&J baby powder at J&J executives would that be assault with a deadly weapon?
- NPMaxwell 8y agoOne exposure might not be sufficient to create a deadly cancer.
- naikrovek 8y agoSons of bitches. (I realize this doesn't contribute a lot, and I think it needed to be said anyway.)
- cm2187 8y agoWhen 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.
- jasongill 8y agoDid 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.
- rightbyte 8y ago3% of other (minerals?) than talk. Not 3% asbestos to make that clear.
- cm2187 8y agoAnd even then, without a dangerous threshold level, the number is meaningless.
- objektif 8y agoHow about none? Is it advertised or listed as containing asbestos in the ingredient list? Do you want to use it on your baby?
- cm2187 8y ago"None" doesn't exist in nature. Every product is always contaminated by all sort of chemicals. It's always a matter of concentration. The water with which you prepare you baby milk likely contains cyanide, lead or arsenic. Just not in high enough dose to matter.
- asaddhamani 8y ago
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoEverybody 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.
- microcolonel 8y agoNot only that, J&J appears to meet or exceed that standard, if the article is anything to go by.
- user5994461 8y agoThey exceed the standard that they lobbied the government to set. How surprising.
- snek 8y agoI doubt the average consumer is aware of the way that talc and asbestos deposit, but moreover, this article is claiming that J&J went above that limit.
- dpau 8y agoYes, everyone knew, especially the ceramics community. Back in 2006 a potter successfully sued Vanderbilt for contracting mesothelioma due to his use of Nytal, a talc widely used in the pottery community [1]. As of last year this brand of talc is no longer available due to the issue of asbestos contamination. It's widely known that many talcs contain asbestos or "asbestos-like" minerals and can be damaging to the lungs. It's a wonder that those old cartoons show mothers liberally applying clouds of baby powder to babies, those fine particulates hang around in the air for a very long time. [1]: https://www.levylaw.com/talc-asbestos-mesothelioma/ https://www.levylaw.com/talc-asbestos-mesothelioma/
- thegabez 8y agoNot the millions of mothers who've put it on their infants.
- schaefer 8y agoYep, 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 discussing risk, we're discussing fear. [1] http://www.clarkcountynv.gov/airquality/announcements/Pages/InformationonNaturalOccurringAsbestosinSouthernNevada.aspx http://www.clarkcountynv.gov/airquality/announcements/Pages/...
- philtar 8y agoI have a question which I don't believe is answered: these people who knew, where they using the powder on their own babies? Because they could be due to mental minimization of the risks associated with the use of their own products. If they are, and they could be, then humans are more pro-ignorance than I ever thought.
- user5994461 8y agoWonder if they sell the same product in Europe. I don't think we have a similar exception as the USA to allowing putting asbestos in cosmetics.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoThe 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
- rdtsc 8y agoAnd now you know why they delete it... At least one of the reasons.
- NPMaxwell 8y agoKeeping your own copies might not be a bad idea. Almost certainly a violation of company policy.
- rleigh 8y agoEmails are one thing, but product QC results and related communications might well be retained for decades. Not just for liability reasons, but because trends in process behaviour and performance can be observed and acted upon, and correlated with changes to suppliers, machinery, workers' shift patterns, and other factors. This can affect the bottom line.
- Teichopsia 8y agoIt is worrisome that current, and future "leaders" are discussing the ethics and other nuanced nitpickings.. as if this were a debate class. There should be one - correct - answer.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Farradfahren 8y agoIm pretty sure, we should have those people regulate themselves.. we can trust them, after all they thrust in us.
- NPMaxwell 8y agoLeaded gas. Asbestos insulation. Cigarettes. Fossil fuels. High schools would do well to put on All My Sons every 3 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_My_Sons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_My_Sons "All My Sons is based upon a true story... how in 1941–43 the Wright Aeronautical Corporation based in Ohio had conspired with army inspection officers to approve defective aircraft engines destined for military use"
- onetimemanytime 8y agoIf it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that people died because of this, and that execs knew the results and danger and ignored them, why shouldn't the state(s) charge them personally with murder /manslaughter ? In the end someone, a living, breathing human being, made the final decision to ju$t keep going. Let them explain it to the jury. Asbestos was found in powder and people died because of it (assuming both can be proven--a judge will have to convinced first and then it goes to trial.) Money is one part of the equation, you can be jailed for life for murder and asked to pay $15million for killing that person.
- mannykannot 8y agoI am speculating about motives here, but it seems to me that this sort of behavior is an example of an all-too-common form of the 'banality of evil', Hannah Arendt's observation / thesis that the holocaust was enabled and implemented by a large cadre of rather ordinary people who were 'just doing their jobs'. In this case, there was no nucleus of genocidal, powerful and violently coercive psychopaths driving the process; it may have been almost self-organizing out of people 'just doing their jobs' in response to the initial mistake of shipping a tainted product, and either not thinking of the ethical issues, or actively suppressing them (some of both, I imagine), all helped along by a dose of self-interest. This is not intended to be in any way an excuse for what happened here; if anything, it is a cautionary tale, as any of us might, one day, be faced with a choice between just doing our job and doing the right thing.
- dgzl 8y agoHonestly, reading that entire thing was exhausting. How obvious does it have to be before we change as a people.
- nickbauman 8y agoThe whole purpose of making a corporation is to mitigate risk in the first place. That's literally why they came into being. Secondly, it is to concentrate financial power to pursue a joint mission, usually profit. So with these two design forces, there's a structural incentive in the short term for these things to happen. A decades-long awareness of unethical dealings is another side effect of this design: externalizing costs onto society at large.