It's sad that I'm not surprised that a company would put profit over life. I'm saddened by the fact but not surprised.
What really gets me is that baby powder is marketed towards young mothers and babies. That's a hardcore attitude towards money over life. How can they ever defend that?
But people from the same culture insist on the existence of "systematic sexism". Are they not mutually exclusive? I am genuinely interested in this. I do not understand how you can believe that people value women more than men, and at the same time say that there is "systematic sexism", "male oppression (against women)", etc. And on top of that surprisingly it is only men who are at fault, at least according to the people whom I have asked.
Please if you down-vote, do give me some sort of a feedback. It helps me learn and it helps me to not make the same mistake twice. :)
I think its more about trust and trust of products, historically we've believed women and children to be weaker and more vulnerable as people which is in turn why we depict them as so in sexist attacks: "Women are not good enough" and men are depicted traditionally as "strong, tough and burly" which I would say is also a wrong and stereotyped point making it harder for many men who are not like that or might need a break but can't because they have to maintain their "tough" image.
Thus Johnson & Johnson breaking that delicate trust over the issue of vulnerable women and children shows them as profiting from the "weak" and "precious" using products they knew were wrong. Society does not look well upon harmful exploitation at the profit of a few but expense of many, especially when you buy talc powder to use for children trusting that it won't harm you.
Big tears and all. If people put that aside and simply looked at the numbers and product composition this problem wouldn't have been a mystery. Qualifying our failed perception with the implicit bias that allowed this failure doesn't ring of a resolution.
You kind of expect people to look after young mothers and babies and toxic stuff is unnecessary. If it was marketed as a car repair product you'd more expect it to be a bit toxic along with petrol, brake liners and so on.
Agreed, the remark in question is just a form of marketing intended to pull on the heartstrings. I feel confident saying that because this product is used the same way by everybody and its equally toxic.
They only killed a few thousand babies. And babies are small, and a drag on the economy! They're like tiny little immigrants who don't pay taxes, then grow up to take our jobs. Anyway, just because it's labeled "Baby Powder" doesn't necessarily mean you should put it on babies. I mean, I like babies just as much as the next guy, but I just can't eat a whole one.
>Pediatric MPM is an extremely rare disease. To the best of our knowledge, there are less than 300 published cases [1]. The disease appears to be a different entity than its adult counterpart, as it is not associated with asbestos or radiation exposure [1],
So even if there were asbestos in the talc and even if asbestos caused cancer in kids, there's still not thousands of reported mesothelioma cases in kids.
The thing about many of these environmental factor diseases is that they're long-term. You might get repeatedly exposed to some cancer-causing agent like talcum powder containing asbestos as a baby and then not develop the disease for decades later (e.g. and you die at 50 instead of 80). It's still shaving decades off life expectancy; it's just not killing immediately.
That's actually why these are so insidious, because if it were killing immediately then J&J would have had to address it long ago as it would have been obvious. Instead, they've continued doing it for decades, affecting who knows how many people, because the effects are divorced from the cause by time.
Instead of going for low hanging anti-coporate karma, I was just carrying the water for and minimizing the damages of huge faceless corporations, to balance out against the mistaken impression that "The anti-corporate attitude is a natural consequence of the pervasive culture of CEO hero-worship among a great deal of HN commenters." [1]
But your corporate apologetics left me in the dust (so to speak, coughcough). You should contact the Trump Administration -- they're looking for someone who can explain with a straight face why it's actually Mariee Juárez parent's fault that their daughter died in ICE custody.
I love what you've done with the double "so even if" technique, casting doubt on not one but TWO inconvenient facts, then finally providing a back-up excuse: "So even if there were asbestos in the talc and even if asbestos caused cancer in kids, ..." -- Conway and Huckabee-Sanders will respect your style.
I apologize to J&J and anyone else whose feelings I've hurt, for not doing my research before mistakenly and unfairly blaming thousands of baby deaths on J&J, where it was only a few hundred dead babies (which won't even fill my garage [2]). Fortunately the clouds of carcinogenic dust only killed thousands of the baby's parents. Thanks for pointing out my mistake!
> They didn't mention deliberately shipping products with asbestos, but rather than even with their testing, they could not find/remove the trace amounts.
Sure, But TFA did go into their efforts to downplay third-party evidence, and slander critics. And it mentioned questions about the sensitivity of J&J's asbestos testing.
And about removing it, TFA argues that they currently use Chinese talc, which contains much less asbestos. So they could have sought other sources decades ago, instead of stonewalling.
Or maybe better yet, they could have stopped using talc.
To be fair, that's precisely the kind of article 80% of people will discuss without reading: pseudo-poetic babbling over 6000 words under a yelling headline instead of delivering the actual information. The worst kind of "journalism" possible.
The anti-corporate attitude is a natural consequence of the pervasive culture of CEO hero-worship among a great deal of HN commenters. It's counterculture.
My dad used baby powder as deodorant because he had sensitive skin. Died of lung cancer at age 58, and never smoked. Anecdotal, but this really pisses me off.
The various facets of all transportation industries probably have as much or more asbestos grinding into the air with particulate matter from vehicular brake systems on trains and automobiles, and to a lesser extent aviation.
The soot in the NYC subway is probably ripe with asbestos. Every time I smell that acrid ceramic smell of new brakes on a subway car, I figure I'm catching a whiff of asbestos, and it's a smell I encounter more than talc.
I only know the smell for what it is from changing brake pads on my car a few times, years ago.
Asbestos brake pads are illegal in the US as far as I know (and I’ve heard that the asbestos in the old banned ones was not the same as the really nasty stuff in insulation, even after being ground up during normal use).
Did NYC somehow get a special “kill all the commuters” exemption under the radar, or something?
Asbestos brake pads are NOT illegal in the US, according to the EPA[0]. I have not been able to find any evidence that asbestos brake particulate is safe[1].
There are numerous places online saying that most brake pads no longer use asbestos, particularly OEM brake pads. Though I can't find any numbers to back this up. Also, I have no idea how carcinogenic the replacement materials are; I hope they are less dangerous than asbestos.
I couldn’t find much detail about the sources of home/office radon in the linked site. Is it suspected to naturally occurring ie coming out of the ground or from some product or chemical used?
It rises up out of the ground, and the (expensive) solution is to install a vacuum system beneath the slab that vents the the outside. I know because my parents' house has such a system. More info: https://sosradon.org/reducing-radon-in-your-home
It comes out of the ground naturally in many places and accumulates to dangerous levels in buildings with poor ventilation. There is very little industrial use of radon.
As others have mentioned asbestos increases the risk of a very specific type of lung cancer.
People don’t seem to realize that there isn’t a cause for every case of cancer. Sometimes you just get cancer even having never been exposed to any risk factors.
I had heard that _any_ powder or particulate matter is a danger to lung health long term. Including talc whether or not it has asbestos.
The size of of the particles on the average might not be small enough to matter, but over time and volume there will be more than a few small particles.
> The Reuters article is one-sided, false and inflammatory.
> The article ignores that thousands of tests by J&J, regulators, leading independent labs, and academic institutions have repeatedly shown that our talc does not contain asbestos.
Which is a cute line, but Reuters has the receipts... dozens of documents with experts from all over pointing out that the J&J talc sources have worrying levels of asbestos. My favorite one is a 2018 lab report in which they tested a sample of 1978 Baby Powder that they pulled from the J&J Museum and found asbestos:
> "Based on the results of our analysis, it can be stated, that individuals who used 1978 Johnson's Baby Powder would have, more likely than not, been exposed to fibrous amphibole asbestos."
Caveats that this likely came from a plaintiff's attorney, but the methods seem solid.
> "The talcs contain widely varying amounts of tremolite or fibrous talc. Our Baby Powder contains talc fragments classifiable as fiber. [...] It should be cautioned, however, that no final product will ever be made which will be totally free of respirable particles."
They knew their product had respirable particles, including nonzero quantities fibrous particles.. they lobbied the FDA to use less sensitive tests so that their products wouldn't fail tests, and they lied about it for the past 40 years. I'm shocked they only lost 10% of their company's value today.
The important distinction is "Respirable" not "particles". Respirable particles are those that are small enough to get into the alveoli of the lungs. Most talc particles are much larger, >25μm, which are easily caught in the nasal passages or cilia in the throat but there's a huge range of sizes depending on the talc source. Small particles (<10μm) can move to the lungs, hence the air quality warnings at PM2.5, PM7.5, and PM10. Particles of that size are particularly dangerous, but moreso when they contain fibrous silicates like asbestos, which are known to cause cancer when respired.
In the Reuters documents, you see repeated references from scientists / consultants to just swapping the talc for corn starch since it has a larger average particle size and a smaller distribution of sizes -- and importantly, doesn't have any fibrous silicates which can't be guaranteed with mined talc.
Well, "does not contain asbestos" may be true. Although that may just reflect reliance on flawed testing methodology. But more important, considering liability for past exposure, is whether it did contain asbestos, some decades ago.
J&J’s test results are meaningless if they have been suppressing other result sets they don’t like.
I’d like to hear them discuss that part of the allogations.
Personally I think it should be illegal to run these kinds of studies or pharmaceutical trials without committing to publish the results regardless of outcome.
[edit] I think the original reply is pretty to the point:
>J&J attorneys provided Reuters with hundreds of documents and directly responded to dozens of questions in order to correct misinformation and falsehoods. Notwithstanding this, Reuters repeatedly refused to meet with our representatives to review the facts and refused to incorporate much of the material we provided them.
>The Reuters article is wrong in three key areas:
>The article ignores that thousands of tests by J&J, regulators, leading independent labs, and academic institutions have repeatedly shown that our talc does not contain asbestos.
>The article ignores that J&J has cooperated fully and openly with the U.S. FDA and other global regulators, providing them with all the information they requested over decades. We have also made our cosmetic talc mines and processed talc available to regulators for testing. Regulators have tested both, and they have always found our talc to be asbestos-free.
>The article ignores that J&J has always used the most advanced testing methods available to confirm that our cosmetic talc does not contain asbestos. Every method available to test J&J’s talc for asbestos has been used by J&J, regulators, or independent experts, and all of these methods have all found that our cosmetic talc is asbestos-free.
It's interesting reading their site, considering it focuses almost entirely on the ovarian cancer side of things and manages to cite zero sources for their mesothelioma claims. Their miner and miller statistics have zero data backing them up.
I'm inclined to believe J&J is heavily bullshitting here given how misleading their talc site is.
Why? Talc has many applications [1], cosmetics obviously have a distinct set of requirements vs. food vs. internal use vs. industrial applications, etcetera.
Just looking at the account histories for the defence worries me. J&J come proper clean otherwise your fucked. If you are fucked admit it. If you're not fucked name the competitor that is fucking you. These are our children - you're not going to fuck with us about this. How the fuck is the 1976 agreement not to include asbestos voluntary? Switzerland has very low talc sales btw.
Tylenol 1982? J&J pulled every bottle off of every shelf from every retailer, imagine what the cost was. Sure management may not be the same today as it was back then, but you dont get to the position they're in by simply looking the other way
It's funny -- That J&J case is taught almost universally in ethics and business courses because it was so clearly the right thing to do, the company did so at great expense, and engendered so much good will.
Then it turns out during the same period they were actively misleading about the problematic nature of their talc. Since then, they've had several other scandals including bribing doctors all over Europe[1], were successfully sued over defective transplants that they knew about[2], shipped a poorly tested and dangerous vaginal mesh that also got them sued[3], among other just awful actions. It's looking more and more like they stumbled onto the correct course with the Tylenol episode and shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt for anything else.
I just learned about J&J through an XBOX history video. Microsoft said the failing rate was a tylenol moment for the xbox project. And now J&J fails to honor their past. Weird.
Only for people who already have liver failure or who are attempting a suicide by overdose. Acetaminophen is completely safe at normal doses and the liver enzymes have no problem breaking it down at normal doses. It's only when you take the entire package that you run out of liver enzymes for it.
I feel uncomfortable when I read stories like this: the kind of stories where large groups of otherwise reasonable individuals collectively decide to secretly expose thousands (low-balling) of people to asbestos. Events like this pop up everywhere in the world and everywhen in recorded history. The frequency leads me to believe that my current self and my hypothetical, killer J&J executive self are the same or very similar; differing only in circumstances, rather than character.
I revisit this train of thought fairly often. I think it would do a lot of good to investigate what exactly happened to the people who are knowingly participating in this coverup. Maybe ask them if they would like help in their personal lives? Maybe some kind of welfare program where taxpayers subsidize their lifestyle and also pay for a counselor to help them figure out how to lead joyful, wonderful lives without killing the whole world? I'm just brain-storming from my armchair over here; A thorough investigation would probably yield better answers to the question of "How can I meet my needs if I admit that the company I work for sold asbestos to babies for decades without telling anyone?"
Always spit in your palm, add a small sample, and mix. If it's gritty or even cloudy, don't buy. If you intend to inject, also don't buy if it's viscous. And always do progressive dosage testing, to reduce the risk of overdose or outright poisoning.
> If you're taking street narcotics I think cancer risk is the least of your worries
"least of your worries" is obviously an exaggeration.
While it's true that overdose deaths (attributable in my assessment mostly to bad public policy) have become a leading cause of death, cancer isn't actually far behind.
Overdose deaths (recorded by the CDC as "Poisoning" and classified under "Unintentional Injury" [0]) is the number one cause of death for Americans of both the age group 25-34 and 35-44, but cancer (recorded as "malignant neoplasms") is number four and number two, respectively.
So, if you're in the age group most likely to die from an overdose, then cancer is either the fourth or the second of your worries - far from the least.
> So, if you're in the age group most likely to die from an overdose, then cancer is either the fourth or the second of your worries - far from the least.
Why did you decide to collate by age? It's a non-sequitur.
I presumed that GP's comment, by using the phrase "least of your worries", was a reference to overdose deaths being a more serious concern. So I selected the two age groups in the WISQARS data in which overdose is the most likely cause of death.
parents shouldn't be using baby powder on their infants anyway, there are safer alternatives and most pediatric or obgyn nurses would be able to recommend them.
I mean, I know adults who use it on themselves regularly, It's not just a risk for people who care for children. They use it reduce moisture in various areas (genital and anal region, feet, between thighs, under boobs, etc.) A lot of women are taught to sprinkle it on their underwear ever day to "stay fresh."[1]
>"I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal. Great pressure was put on politicians, and as usual, the politicians relented." -Trump, The Art of the Comeback, 1997
When they're not Rolling Coal, Trump supporters should show their faith in their leader and p0wn the libs by snorting up lines of asbestos and rubbing it all over their skin.
If the economic model was different they might have spoken up. I think it might be worthwhile, in this case, to examine / contrast what a socialist society might do vs a capitalistic society.
EDIT: I'm in no way inferring this is a black and white issue. But I do think it's a worthwhile experiment for the mind.
Thefts, lies, frauds can and do happen everywhere. People follow incentives. If they can get away with it, many will do it. Be it investors trying to cash out with an IPO, or administrators of a government program.
The question is, what do you once you find out these people? To the gallows? Allow the blame to fall on the inevitable scapegoats? Inconsequential fine?
Well, the consequences of this aren't really known yet, so let's be slightly more careful with the cynicism...
I'll also add that you would usually want this to be a civil matter. First, because the standard of proof is far lower ("preponderance of evidence" vs "beyond reasonable doubt", i. e. 50% vs, say, 95%), making actual consequences far more likely.
Secondly, you are more likely to get whistleblowers if you focus on punishing organisations and not individuals.
Thirdly, these really are, almost always, actions by organisations undertaken in a sort of collective delusion, where everyone believes their actions are ok because they see so many others participating in it. None of these people would ever murder someone outright. That they happily do so as a group, thousand times over, needs to inform our reaction: it is a systemic failure, a group dynamic gone awry. Treating it as anything else only diminishes our chances to prevent future cases.
>The documents also depict successful efforts to influence U.S. regulators’ plans to limit asbestos in cosmetic talc products and scientific research on the health effects of talc.
Yet another example proving that no corporation considers the interests of the public in any way. I'm baffled that anyone can argue for unfettered free market capitalism with such a bevy of evidence against it.
> Yet another example proving that no corporation considers the interests of the public in any way.
This statement sort of clearly false and hyperbolic. Why would you make it?
> I'm baffled that anyone can argue for unfettered free market capitalism with such a bevy of evidence against it.
This is a pretty clear sign to me that you don't understand the argument in question. If you can't understand a position well enough to see why someone would support it, then you don't understand the position well enough to reject it.
>This statement sort of clearly false and hyperbolic. Why would you make it?
Name a publicly traded for-profit corporation that exists to serve the public.
At best it's a disregard for the public. You can see it in non-political stories on HN. What percentage of companies have been meaningfully punished by a data breach?
>This is a pretty clear sign to me that you don't understand the argument in question.
I very specifically meant "unfettered free market capitalism" and I could have been more clear. It's the end result of many more popular policies seeking to strip regulations for the sake of making things "more efficient". The fight is obviously about the extent of regulatory removal but "removal of all regulations" is an idea seriously proposed by many. I don't see how our current system needs fewer regulations, especially at a time when corporations are growing through mergers and acquisitions, data is collected and shared more widely, and therefore fewer companies have the ability to affect more individuals.
I've been thinking for long that the company / regulator / public cycle is way too elongated. Too much opportunities for lies and too much delay for public to detect, report and solve problems.
Not sure what is meant by your last sentence. Consumers will obviously avoid J&J baby powder products and switch to a competitor’s baby powder product.
If the report is accurate, then how can consumers know in time to avoid dangerous health effects?
A sample timeline:
1: J&J discovers asbestos in talc products
2: J&J covers it up
3: Consumers, none the wiser, continue using talc products
4: X consumers contract cancer and die too early, fracturing families and causing unknowable amounts of economic damage in the form of lost productivity
5: Decades later, Reuters publishes report
6: Consumers avoid J&J talc products, shareholders lose some money, possible lawsuits
I call your attention to step 4. If the consumers don't know that a product they're using is damaging them irreversibly, how can they make an informed choice?
Is dying a fair cost to inform others about the danger of a product you're using?
Is loss of market value, lawsuit settlements, and regulatory fines a fair consequence for the person who is no longer living?
If a company can cover up health effects, let a bunch of people die, deny everything, and eventually pay some money, is that the market working as intended? What about the people who are dead now, is that money helpful for them?
I don't think we can ever fully trust "the market" to prevent this kind of thing from happening, because companies have no reason to ever admit to wrongdoing that will affect their bottom line, even if lives have been lost. The only time a company will admit wrongdoing, is when the cost of dealing with it publicly is less than the cost of covering it up and possible future liability.
We could have laws that require compounds created to be used by non-expert end-users, whether for food, topical application, or otherwise, to be tested extensively for long-term health effects before they can be sold. This would be a cost to the manufacturers, but what is the value of a life? How much profit would you allow a company to save in order to kill you with a tainted product?
I think GP meant that free-market solutions to corporate malfeasance are very slow and leave many dead people in their wake. Sometimes they never happen at all, at least not without government intervention.
This is one of the biggest issues with unfettered free market capitalism in that long-term issues are incredibly hard to balance out and relatively easy to cover up. By the time people figure out what it is that might be killing them there's little recourse or the damage is already done.
Eventually the free market might kick in and result in companies like J&J being torn apart. Yet are we really willing to repeat the cycle of a shitty company hiding things that are harmful to the public under the guise of a free market? A free market can only theoretically work when consumers have full access to information that allows them to make rational decisions about what they chose to buy; companies hiding information like that very obviously goes against that core concept.
How is this “unfettered?” FDA does quite a bit of “fettering.” That the regulation failed isn’t a failure of free markets, if anything, it’s a failure of regulation. If you are going to regulate and the regulations didn’t work, yet the companies complied with said regulation, do you blame the company or the government?
Plenty of nasty products from the Soviet planned economy only there, you wouldn’t have the benefit of competitors or alternatives for the public — assuming you could even good goods at all. People that complain about capitalism have never lived under the alternative.
Regulation can not work if there is regulatory capture which in practice means that there are no penalties. As long as corporations have no skin in the game and only abide by short-term greed, it's in their best interest to keep finding loopholes and screwing everybody over.
How many times has Goldman Sachs been "penalized" for bypassing regulations? Plenty. Have those penalties amounted to anything? Do you see their behavior changing when they practically own the US government?
In what way is that the result of free market capitalism in particular?
It sounds to me like a basic problem with freedom of action and human nature in a world of imperfect information. It is hard to regulate deleterious behavior when it only has long term bad effects, especially when those effects are indirect and statistical.
This is not to excuse any immorality or lack of ethics on the part of J&J executives. My point is just that preventing these types of abuses is a hard problem to solve regardless of economic system.
It's a harder problem to solve because free market capitalism incentivizes lying to the consumer and hiding facts, especially for things that occur over the extremely long term. Short-term profits are far more valued than maintaining public health or ensuring that their actions don't have any negative consequences in the future. Even if a company lasts to see said consequences, the people in charge at the time end up getting away richer.
It's easier to regulate behavior when you don't reward executives and businesses who use immoral behavior to increase profits.
Well, the alternative to CEOs making these decisions that they are made by politicians and bureaucrats. They are equally capable lying to people and hiding facts out of self interest. I think we could all name a few.
There is no magical alternative economic system that gives people ethics and takes away self interest. What you need are strong institutions that provide checks on corruption and malfeasance. Institution such as investigative reporting, good regulations, and independent agencies enforcing those regulations. You need these regardless of if the means of production are publicly or privately owned, regardless of if your prices are set by the free market or by bureaucrats (or by software someday).
> It's easier to regulate behavior when you don't reward executives and businesses who use immoral behavior to increase profits.
Sure, but allowing consumer choice in a free market allows checks on corporate malfeasance that are hard to replicate with regulations. Free markets and regulations can work together better than either on their own. (Or they can work against each other when poorly implemented)
There are certainly problems with how our free market is structured to incentivize short terms profits for share holders over the longer term health of the company. We could do a much better job with regulatory capture and giving executives of major corporations actual jail sentences.
What really gets me is that baby powder is marketed towards young mothers and babies. That's a hardcore attitude towards money over life. How can they ever defend that?