Predator Profile: JOHNSON & JOHNSON

JOHNSON AND JOHNSON

Medical giant Johnson & Johnson had humble beginnings. Inspired by a speech by antiseptic advocate Joseph Lister, Robert Wood Johnson joined his brothers James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson to create a line of ready-to-use surgical dressings in 1885. The company produced its first products in 1886 and incorporated in 1887. Recently, J & J has been accused of paying tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to boost sales of its drugs in nursing homes. The suit is another in a long series of cases alleging that manufacturers have used illegal inducements to skew medical decisions and promote their products, potentially compromising patient care and inflating medical bills.

General Profile Data on JOHNSON

Website
Board of Directors
Company Profile
Financials

Sources of Interest

Justice suit accuses Johnson & Johnson of paying kickbacks

Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy unit fails in the U.K. as often as 49 percent of the time

Johnson & Johnson to pay $2 billion for false marketing

Reading

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients

The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It

Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine

“Six years ago, John Ioannidis, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, found that nearly half of published articles in scientific journals contained findings that were false, in the sense that independent researchers couldn’t replicate them. The problem is particularly widespread in medical research, where peer-reviewed articles in medical journals can be crucial in influencing multimillion- and sometimes multibillion-dollar spending decisions. It would be surprising if conflicts of interest did not sometimes compromise editorial neutrality, and in the case of medical research, the sources of bias are obvious. Most medical journals receive half or more of their income from pharmaceutical company advertising and reprint orders, and dozens of others[journals] are owned by companies like Wolters Kluwer, a medical publisher that also provides marketing services to the pharmaceutical industry.”