Gillian Neimark at Undark:
Near the beginning of “No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson,” Gardiner Harris’s scathing exposé of the iconic pharmaceutical giant, he writes, “To me, my family, and everyone I knew, Johnson & Johnson was the ideal American corporation.” But in this forensic tour de force, he chronicles the many ways in which the health care behemoth repurposed science to protect profit — lying in sworn testimonials, massaging trial data, pouring billions into litigation, and sacrificing the lives and health of millions of Americans.
To understand the scale of that betrayal, Harris begins not with a drug, but with arguably the company’s most iconic product: Johnson’s Baby Powder. Introduced in 1894 and packaged in soft white and blue tones, the baby powder came to embody the purity, safety, and primal power of maternal care. The fragrance alone — engineered from more than 200 compounds — has imprinted itself onto olfactory memory.
As Harris explains, the company referred to the powder as its “crown jewel” and “Golden Egg.” Other companies had “rational” trust, a 1999 slide deck boasted, but “only Johnson & Johnson also has real emotional trust.”
More here.
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