November 4, 2025 • 55 mins
What dangerous secrets lie beneath the "comforting newborn smell" of one of the most trusted companies in the world?
In this explosive episode, Pulitzer Prize-nominated NYT journalist Gardiner Harris pulls back the curtain on Johnson & Johnson's history, detailed in his book No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson.
Gardiner reveals J&J's systemic deception, from knowingly selling asbestos-contaminated baby powder for seven decades to marketing drugs as cancer cures that were actually "Miracle Grow" for tumours. He exposes J&J's hidden role in the opioid crisis and their shocking refusal to share life-saving HIV drugs with Africa, costing millions of lives.
Drawing from years of investigative reporting, Gardiner explains how corporate PR, media influence, and medical incentives allow giants like J&J to evade accountability, even with secret Grand Jury testimony as evidence. Tara and Gardiner also discuss the stories that didn't make it into the book and the mental toll of exposing the truth.
Tune in for an essential, eye-opening conversation that forces consumers to question the products of a company they love and trust.
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‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tara Khandelwal (00:02):
Hi everyone. If you're new here, this is the
perfect episode to start with,but before we dive in, don't
forget to follow and rate us onSpotify, on Apple podcast. So
let's talk about Johnson andJohnson. For many of us, the
name means baby powder, bandaids and that comforting newborn
spell. It's tied to ourchildhood, to care, to safety,
(00:24):
right? But behind this wholesomeimage is a company that has
hidden the truth, lied tocustomers and endangered
millions and millions of lives.
I didn't know this, and todaywe're speaking to Pulitzer Prize
nominated NYT journalist GardnerHarris, he spent years
uncovering the story and writtenabout it in his new book. It's a
(00:45):
deep dive into Johnson andJohnson's century long history,
from its inspiring beginnings toall of these shocking scandals
that have dropped the company.
And what I really liked aboutthis book is not just this jaw
dropping revelations and thisexpose, but also how it's
written, because it's very grip.
It's not only very gripping, butit's empathetic and it's human.
(01:07):
So Gardner, I'm so excited tohave you here today. Welcome to
Books and Beyond.
Gardiner Harris (01:14):
I'm so glad to be here. I'm honored. Thank you.
Tara Khandelwal (01:19):
So you know, let's start with just the
opening of the book, becausethat is so hard hitting. You are
at the airport, and you meetthis sales rep from Johnson and
Johnson, and she is completelydisillusioned because she has
worked with a doctor who hasprescribed her own nephew the
drug that she is selling, whichis used to treat young adults
(01:40):
who have mental health issueslike schizophrenia, and she
knows that her nephew didn'tneed this drug, but her sister
and her relatives have haveinsisted that he have this drug,
and the side effects have beenso so bad. He's put on a lot of
weight. He's become a listlessyoung boy, and she has seen the
(02:01):
negative effects of her work andher marketing efforts now in
real time. And I think thatscene was just so gut wrenching.
And I can just imagine sort ofyou in that airport, hearing
that story, and then, you know,maybe wanting to uncover more of
this, because you also, as acoincidence, grew up in the town
(02:24):
where Johnson, Johnson had a lotof its headquarters and
factories. So can you tell meabout a sort of how the story
then led to your decision toresearch on this book, and how
and why? Why did you decide touncover the story in the first
place.
Gardiner Harris (02:41):
Well, again, thanks for having me. I mean,
you know, Tara, I think one ofthe interesting things is
journalists get known for thestories that they do, but we all
have a million stories that weknow are incredible, that we get
part of the story, but we don'tget enough. And that was one of
(03:04):
those stories. That was one ofthose, you know, the fish that
got away. It was a great story.
This woman told me, but shewouldn't give me permission to
use her name. I really couldn'tdo the story without a name
attached to it, and there justwasn't enough there. So it was a
failure that haunted me for avery long time. Now, I will tell
(03:29):
you that because of what shetold me, I ended up spending
years trying to find a way totalk about the use of
antipsychotics in children, andended up doing a series of
stories on the issue in the NewYork Times, not using her, of
course, or her story, but beinginspired by her story. And those
(03:52):
stories ended up leading tolegislative changes in the
United States and all the restthat I didn't really actually
talk about in the book, becauseI didn't want to make myself a
character in the book. But itwas, it was that moment with her
was one of the most importantmoments in my life. It led not
only to a series of stories inthe New York Times that led to
(04:15):
legislative changing UnitedStates, but it really planted
the seed. It was one of the mostimportant precursors to this
book. There were others just theyear before my son was born. And
unfortunately, I don't know ifyou're a parent, but my first
son spent three or four days inthe NICU unit, you know, the
(04:40):
neonatal intensive care. He hislife was, you know, hanging by a
thread, as often happens. He wasborn a little bit early.
Couldn't nurse. So we had this,my wife and I had this
heartbreaking. A moment in ourlives when we weren't sure
(05:01):
whether our son would survive.
He did. He came home hugerelief. And this was back in the
day when there wasn't anythingsuch as paternity leave, which
is still true in much of India.
And so I went right back to workafter my son was born, and I, in
just the following days, got ahuge tranche of documents from a
(05:23):
source showing that Johnson andJohnson had spent years selling
a heartburn drug as if it wasreally good for preemie infants.
In fact, the company knew thatthe heartburn drug didn't help
preemie infants, there was,there was no benefit to them,
and in fact, had this sideeffects that that occasionally
(05:46):
killed them. But they were sosuccessful at selling this drug
called propulsive that 1/5 ofall preemies in the United
States in the in the late 1990swere prescribed this drug, and
I'm reading these documentswhere inside Johnson and
Johnson, they know exactly whatthey're doing, which is they are
(06:06):
they are harming babies, anddead babies start piling up and
piling up and piling up. And thecompany inside has this debate,
wait, all these babies aredying, we're not helping anyone.
Why are we doing this? And theirbosses are responding, we're
doing this because it makes us alot of money. And I'm reading
(06:27):
this, my son has just been inthe NICU, and I and I honestly
cannot believe that Americanexecutives are willingly
allowing and, in fact, acting ina way that will kill these
babies for money. And I just, Ijust couldn't believe it. And
(06:49):
I'll tell you one other thingthat really sort of stuck with
me, that led to the book, andthis is something that where
India plays a really importantrole. You'll remember Tara that
in the late 1990s ARVs, theseantiretroviral drugs, come out,
and they end up saving the livesof HIV patients up until that
(07:14):
point, up until, really, 1996when the cocktail of ARVs came.
You know, AIDS was a deathsentence. And then in 96 really,
in 97 these cocktails ofmedicines come out, and they're
saving HIV patients lives, andmaking HIV really a chronic
(07:35):
illness instead of a deathsentence. But these drugs are so
expensive, they cost roughly$20,000 a year, and you have to
take them for the rest of yourlife that that you know nobody
really outside of these well,very wealthy countries can
afford them, as you willremember, this was the time when
(07:56):
HIV infections were sweepingacross Africa, and Africa was
facing essentially a deathsentence. There were predictions
that half of the Africanpopulation would die in the
next, you know, 10 years or so,and so there was this huge
controversy where the companieswere bludgeoned by advocates,
(08:19):
you have to make these drugsavailable to Indian generic
companies to copy and allow themto sell and distribute in
Africa. And the pharmaceuticalindustry essentially buckled,
and a program was set up at theUnited Nations called UN AIDS to
collect the patents of thesedrugs, give them to people like
(08:43):
my friend, Yusuf Hamid at Ciplato copy and then distribute in
Africa. And once the price ofthe generics got below $1 a day,
they knew that they had themoney to save essentially the
continent. So all the companiesgave up their patents. The
Indian companies copied thepills and and, and, you know,
(09:06):
more than 20 million lives havebeen saved. The one exception to
this story was Johnson andJohnson. Johnson and Johnson was
one of three or four companiesthat were major manufacturers of
AIDS drugs and Johnson, andJohnson simply refused to
provide its drugs and its drugpatents to this program. And so
(09:29):
this happy, good news storyabout the pharmaceutical
industry doing the right thinghad this one little asterisk
that was kind of unbelievable tome, because I grew up, as I told
you, in this town, right nearJohnson and Johnson's
headquarters. I grew up amongstkids whose parents worked there.
Everybody really believed inthis company as this incredibly
(09:51):
ethical company, and yet theyweren't playing ball in the
same. Living of the Africancontinent. Like, how is this
possible? So I had the HIVthing, I had my own son, and
then I meet this woman, and itwas enough for me to sort of be
like, Okay, this company notonly is not the ethical Paragon
(10:14):
that I thought it was, but is,in fact, exactly the opposite.
You know, I covered the entirepharmaceutical company industry,
and it's gotten, for goodreason, a bad reputation for
doing some bad things. Therewere some 300 or so guilty
pleas, more than $20 billion infines. But there are actually
(10:36):
some good companies in theindustry. There are some bad
companies. There are some goodcompanies. And I realized that
Johnson and Johnson had thisstrange thing where, on the one
hand it was it had the bestreputation. It was beloved. It
routinely tops all these surveysof being the most admired
(10:57):
corporation in the world, but onthe other hand, was the worst of
the worst in how it actuallybehaved.
Tara Khandelwal (11:07):
Those stories are just very chilling. And you
know, when I was reading yourbook, I was just thinking about
how capitalism has completelydistorted the industry, and I
don't think that's somethingthat we really speak about in
India, just because I don'tthink there's enough data on
this. I don't think there'senough research happening. So I
see a lot of movies, a lot of TVshows, a lot of news about the
(11:30):
American Pharmaceuticalcompanies. You know, you also,
you mentioned this in your book,and I've seen it on television,
that in the movies, how thesesales reps bribe these doctors
to wrongfully prescribemedicine, and it's almost
standard practice. And I'm justthinking, here we go to doctors
to help us, and then those arethe same people that are
actually giving us somethingthat's so bad for us, like, how
(11:52):
do you even know what's rightand what to consume in a world
like this?
Gardiner Harris (11:58):
I think it's really difficult. And that's you
know, one of the most importantreasons that I wrote this book
is to give people tools tounderstand really the healthcare
system, the dynamics, theincentives, why you really
should be skeptical of yourdoctor, even this person that
(12:19):
you think is so well educated,someone you should trust. You
know, in the United States, thepharmaceutical industry gives
roughly $3 billion directly todoctors, for those doctors to
serve as part time drug salesreps. So at you know, on the one
(12:40):
hand, they're supposed to bethese learned intermediaries for
you, which is they know moreinformation than you, and
they're supposed to becompletely agnostic about what
drugs you take, because they'renot supposed to have a financial
incentive in their decisionmaking. That's the definition of
a learned intermediary. But bytaking the money and and and
(13:05):
listening to these pitches, theyare neither learned because they
their, their their ownunderstanding gets distorted,
nor are they a true intermediarybecause they're actually working
for the drug or the devicecompany, so it really distorts
(13:26):
the heart of the healthcaresystem, which is the trust
between a patient and theirdoctor. And until that changes,
the kind of disasters that Idescribe in the book will only
continue, and I wanted to takejust a moment to, you know, just
talk about what those disastersare. You know, the first one
(13:49):
that I talk about is, isJohnson's baby powder, and the
fact that the company has knownfor 70 years that its baby
powder has been contaminatedwith asbestos, and yet sold this
product to mothers for theirbabies. And you know, at the
height of the popularity of thisproduct, half of all babies in
(14:10):
the United States, and I'm suresome huge share in India, had
their bottoms dusted withJohnson's baby powder. And then
I tell the story about Tylenol.
And you know, Tylenol is seenas, widely seen as the safest
pain pill out there. In fact, itis by far the most dangerous
(14:31):
over the counter medicine sold.
It causes more death and injurythan all other over the counter
medicines combined. So I I showthe story of how Tylenol got to
this terribly dangerous spaceand and hopefully provide
(14:54):
warnings to people about beingcareful about using this drug
and. I walked through a seriesof other prescription drugs and
devices. The first is EPO, thatwas the Johnson and Johnson sold
as a cancer drug, even thoughJohnson and Johnson knew that it
was actually Miracle Grow totumors. So instead of curing
(15:16):
your cancer, it actuallysecretly made it worse. And they
knew this, kept it secret forsomething like 15 years, and
around 500,000 Americans died asa result. And then I tell the
story that that you and Istarted this with Risperdal and
antipsychotic, and how thecompany illegally targeted the
(15:39):
smallest of children with thisdrug and the oldest of the
elderly, and that, you know, theit's routinely talked about that
the opioid crisis is the worstpublic health crisis in American
history. It's not. It's theantipsychotic crisis that has
killed more than a millionAmericans easily, and to this
(15:59):
day, kills three times as manypatients as opioids and and I
talk about the lies that thatJohnson and Johnson told
criminal lies. They eventuallypleaded guilty to criminal
charges in the marketing ofthese medicines and, and, you
know, covered up their theirtheir actions by telling
(16:22):
doctors, you know, don't worry,no one is ever going to catch
you. And I know this becauseI've seen the grand jury sworn
testimony of the company's salesrepresentatives who did this,
you know, and then I walkedthrough the opioid crisis, you
know. I'm sure you've seen someof the TV shows about the
Sacklers and Purdue pharmacausing the opioid crisis. And
(16:46):
everybody thinks that theSacklers and Purdue pharma are
the worst of the worst. Youknow, as a former Johnson and
Johnson executive told me,they're the hikers compared to
Johnson and Johnson, even justwhen you look at the opioids,
you know, at the height of theopioid prescription epidemic in
the United States, about 10% ofthe bodies that showed up in
(17:07):
morgues had a Purdue pharmaproduct in their system. 60% had
a J and J product in theirsystem. So why is it that the
media, particularly the Americanmedia, has sold this story that
Purdue pharma and the Sacklersare sort of the sole responsible
parties for this epidemic. Howis it that Johnson and Johnson
(17:28):
has gotten away with its muchmore important role, and nobody
knows it, and that's a reallyimportant part of the book, is
the incredible failure of all ofthe institutions that should
have caught this company,stopped them and brought
accountability. You know, thefirst one, obviously, is the
(17:50):
FDA, has played a disastrousrole in enabling these, these,
these terrible moments. And thenthe American media, you know, I
worked for the New York Times, Iworked for the Wall Street
Journal. We should have done amuch better job, but Johnson and
Johnson is one of the largestadvertisers in the world. They
have enormous influence onAmerican reporters. You know,
(18:15):
the kind of influence thatPurdue pharma, this tiny one
product company, couldn't hopeto get which is one of the big
reasons that Purdue pharma wasthe focus of all those stories,
and not j and j and then I tellstories about metal on metal,
hip implants and vaginal mesh.
You know, two huge disastersthat, by the way, had enormous
echo effects in India. You know,millions of patients in India
(18:41):
were affected by those productsas well. And in fact, there's a
new book out about just thevaginal mesh scandal in India.
So, you know, I didn't reallytell the India story in most of
these things. It's such acomplicated story that I decided
to focus almost exclusively onthe United States, but there is
(19:02):
an Indian Echo to each one ofthese disasters. And you know,
one of those echoes, the vaginalmesh, one has its own book out
right now in India. But, youknow, I thought you would ask me
that I don't know offhand. I'lltell you in a minute. Yeah, the
book has been sent to me, andit's wonderful. Anyway, it's the
(19:26):
book has this. And then, ofcourse, I tell the the covid
vaccine story and how, you know,everyone's sort of in the United
States, covid vaccines fromPfizer and moderna are suddenly
controversial, but nobody reallyrevisits the J and J vaccine,
which is was by far the moredangerous of all of them. You
(19:49):
know, it caused a clottingdisorder. It caused Guillain
Barre Syndrome. It wasn'tparticularly effective. So these
dangers not. Made no sense, andit was withdrawn. Whereas, you
know, Pfizer's and moderna'svaccines, obviously, are
continued to be sold around theworld.
Tara Khandelwal (20:10):
I think that I really like the way that the
book is structured, because, asyou said, you go through each of
these tragedies honestly. When Iread the baby powder section,
and realized that it had so muchabestos, which leads to ovarian
cancer, and you give those casestudies, I had no idea. And I
did a Google search about babypowder in India, and it's being
(20:35):
sold in abundance here. And thenI looked at the labels, and the
labels are no chemicals,organic, all of these like
beautiful words that will compelmothers to keep buying it. I
know that in every Indianhousehold there is Johnson baby
powder. I know that I have grownup with it, and I have two
(20:55):
younger siblings that I knowI've seen my mother use it
copiously on them. And just tothink that these everyday
household products can cause somuch harm is insane to me. And I
think that the EPO drug chapter,where you know, you know that
this drug actually causes tumorsto grow, but you are setting it
as an anti cancer drug, is justso crazy to me. And my biggest
(21:19):
question when I was reading thisbook, and then you also talk
about, yeah, the drug thatcauses male breasts in young
boys and leaves them disfigured.
So all of these things, thishistory of negligence that you
have covered. So my biggestquestion that when I was reading
this book is, you know, how comenobody is talking about this.
How come, even in India,Johnson, Johnson products are
(21:40):
the pinnacle of consumer goods,you know, for babies, for band
aids, all of this. Nobody istalking about any of this.
Before your book, I had no ideaany of this was happening. You
know, touch upon it in the booka lot. You know, the complicit
FDA, how Johnson, Johnsonthreatens to pull advertising
(22:02):
out of TV networks and mediacompanies if they threaten to
expose anything about this. ButI wanted to ask, you know, why
isn't this spoken about? Mod?
What can we do to sort of getthis out there? A little bit
more? First of all,
Gardiner Harris (22:19):
you know, it's not out there, because this
company, arguably its corecompetency, is cover ups and
keeping itself out of the newsfor all of these disasters.
Tara, you're a book person. Youknow this, particularly in
(22:40):
business books, 90% of businessbooks are these positive books
that tell you stories that youalready know, like how Amazon
was created and conquered theworld and why it's such a great
company. How you know Facebookwas founded. You know, they're
these sort of laudatory bookstelling you stories you you
already know, but giving younice little details about them.
(23:03):
And then maybe 9.9% of businessbooks are how this company that
collapsed really collapsed. Butin all of these 99.9% of the
business books, you go into thebook knowing how it's going to
end. You know the story to beginwith, because it's been covered
endlessly in newspapers. So, youknow, the book about Enron
(23:25):
collapsing in fraud. You've beenreading about this, you know,
it's fraud, and you and and it'snot particularly surprising. I
think one of the problems withmy book is, and I apologize if
this sounds arrogant, but itsoriginality. You know, I'm
telling you a story that youreally haven't heard. You know,
(23:46):
I didn't write all these storiesin the New York Times. I really
kind of wasn't allowed to andand so I am talking to you about
a company that you think is thegreatest, you think is the most
admired. And I'm actuallytelling you, it's just the
opposite. It's one of the greathistory's greatest serial
(24:06):
killers. And I think there's akind of a disconnect that
happens, like, I didn't get areview in the New York Times,
you know, despite all my yearsworking there, I didn't get a
review in The Wall StreetJournal, despite all my years
working there, part of thatmight be because I'm critical of
both papers, but I think a lotof it is just like, What am I
supposed to do with this? Youknow, I accuse Johnson and
(24:28):
Johnson of contributing to thedeaths of more than 2 million
Americans. You know, it's awholly original charge, and it's
because I got epidemiologists toadd up dead babies and dead
adults for me, but again, it'snothing that's been out there
before, and I think a lot ofjournalists are just like, I
don't even know what to do withthis. So it didn't get kind of
(24:53):
the attention in the bookreviews. It didn't really make
news, because I think you. Ijust think it is so unusual and
it, you know, it took me a longtime to persuade my publisher
that, you know, that we neededto go through this. We went
through huge legal reviewsbecause this story is so
(25:16):
original, you know, we wereworried we'd get sued by, you
know, Johnson, and Johnson, andmany of the people we met, was
Tara Khandelwal (25:24):
gonna ask you about that. So, yeah, was there
any backlash?
Gardiner Harris (25:28):
You know, we haven't been, and I think it,
you know, I think the company isjust hoping that it kind of goes
away. And I'm sure they're,they're sort of worried that if
they sued, it would just give itmore attention. But, you know,
that's one of my explanation.
You know, it is. It has beendisappointing to me that my
(25:48):
former colleagues, you know, Imake news here, for instance. As
you may know, in my bio, Isubsequently, you know, I was a
reporter in India for a while,and I came back and was a White
House correspondent for The NewYork Times. So I got to sort of
the top of the of the mountainon journalism. And you know,
(26:09):
when you're in those positions,it's not unusual for you to get
secret documents. You know,national security documents.
What is unusual is to getdocuments from grand juries in
the United States. They are thelast truly secret institutions
here. The New York Times has nothad the New York Times, the Wall
Street Journal, Fox News, Idon't believe there's been a
(26:33):
large media organization theUnited States that had that has
had a single Grand Jury filefrom a single grand jury for
more than 50 years. I havehundreds of Grand Jury files
from three separate grand juriesinvolving Johnson and Johnson.
That is one of the reasons why Ican make these extraordinary
(26:55):
charges, because I have, youknow, the secret grand jury,
sworn testimony of companyexecutives and and again, I
think my colleagues are justlike they don't know what to do
about that, because it's, it'snothing they've ever seen.
Tara Khandelwal (27:16):
I think these things take a long time to sort
of come into the limelight, andthen when it does happen, it's
like a juggernaut. And Idefinitely think word of mouth
and readers like me, who youknow, I'm going to post about
this, and more people are goingto read about it, and then sort
of sooner or later, everyoneknows about it. These things
(27:37):
can't remain secret for thatlong, and you have put it out
there for the whole world tosee. And I think it's so
explosive, and it's so shocking,and it's so ubiquitous their
products that everyone is goingto want to know about this,
because it's scary. I wouldn'twant any of my friends to use
Johnson baby powder on theirchildren at all. I would want
them against that my husband's Iwas talking to my husband, and I
(28:01):
was talking to him aboutTylenol, and he said, because
his mother works a lot in theUS, and he said that she used to
actually buy Tylenol and get itback to India, because she
thought it was so safe and andhave it, you know. So there's
everyone. These products havetouched everybody's lives, and
it's just so scary. But comingto, you know, the research part
(28:22):
of the book, you mentioned thatyou had these sources that have
given you these pages of pagesfrom these grand juries, which
is never the case you also andthe book is, is, is long. It's
568, pages with 200 pages justfor notes, References and
sources. So it's really, reallybad research. You're not making
these claims without backing itup with proper evidence. You
(28:46):
look at case files, articles,personal accounts, private
company documents. You know, oneexample is Surat. Was a letter
by Dr Alfred Wiener, aconsultant to J and J, which
revealed that the company andeven FDA ignored warnings about
talc. So what was your researchprocess like? Let's come to the
writing of this book. How didyou begin the research process,
(29:08):
and how did you begin piecingthis all together? Well,
Gardiner Harris (29:10):
Tara, you know, one of my great flaws as a
journalist is that I have alwaysspent too much time on
reporting. You know, I alwayssort of want to find the next
cool thing before just sort ofsitting down and writing. And
this happened in spades on thisproject. I, you know, it took me
(29:33):
five years of work, and a bigreason is that I just couldn't
stop digging. You know, I justwanted the next documents that
talk to the next executive. Ijust kept digging and digging
and digging and, you know, Ithe, you know, 95% of the book
is, you know, I probably couldhave done this book in a year,
(29:57):
you know, and save myself, youknow, just. So much agony, but I
did want to find that stuff. Andyou know, I do have a website,
Gardner harris.com that wasactually set up by several
friends of mine in India. Andthe website has a document
section where I put nearly allthese documents. Now, there are
some secret documents, like thegrand jury, ones that I cannot
(30:20):
reveal, for fear that it mightreveal my the pattern of
documents might reveal mysourcing. But nearly all of the
other you know, there arehundreds of 1000s of pages of
documents that you can go lookyourself. You can do your own
research on this, and thatincludes trial transcripts, that
includes internal 1000s of ofinternal company documents that
(30:45):
I got from sources and, youknow, interviews with people, I
ended up interviewing hundredsof executives and former
executives, in part because thegrand jury files actually had
employee rosters with theirnames and cell phone numbers. So
I could call these people, youknow, I, I, I will tell you that
(31:07):
I looked throughout theserosters for that sales rep who I
met at the airport, and I neverdid find her again.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure why.
So, you know, one of my greathopes is that she reads the book
and sees herself mentioned, and,and, and, you know, reaches out
(31:30):
at some point, but that, youknow, that's not happened, but
the process was essentially oneof, you know, reading documents,
going to see people talking tosources. You know, I did years
of that sort of research beforeI really wrote the first word
(31:51):
and then started gradually. Youknow, writing sections of the
book, I will tell you that theoriginal manuscript was roughly
twice as long as the book youhave before you. I had even more
products. Again. Tara, this iswhat I do. I go overboard. And
thank God I had some really goodeditors who said, you know,
(32:15):
Gardner, okay, I know you got tostop. And, you know, as it is,
you've got way too much, andwe're going to have to cut this
in half, which was a terriblypainful process to me. There was
a lot of stories lost that Ithought were really important
and and, you know, the thing is,Tara, the reason why this book
(32:38):
is so important is I did acouple of these. I wrote about a
couple of these disasters in theNew York Times. And each time,
people would say, Oh, well, thecompany might have made a
mistake in this one instance,but it's a great company. So,
you know, I'm not changing mymind about it. And so to kind of
hit, you know, to deal with thatobjection, I was like, Okay, I
(33:02):
need to tell you, you know,originally I thought I need to
tell you 15 different stories.
You know, it's not criminalityand lies aren't the exception
for this company. It's the rule.
And so that's my hope is that bytelling you in a very
dispassionate way exactly whathappened with each one of these,
(33:25):
of these disasters and that costmillions of lives, that you will
see that this is A company thatthat that is really, you know,
essentially, a mafia family,
Tara Khandelwal (33:44):
yeah. And I also like that in the beginning
of the book, you speak a littlebit about how it was set up and
the history of that family, andhow, you know, the brothers took
it over, and by the thirdgeneration, then, you know, the
the third generation couldn'treally run it, and then it
started becoming professionallymanaged, and like that piece of
(34:07):
business history as well, Iwanted to ask you about all the
things that you couldn't putinside the book, because I'm
sure there's a lot two things,actually. One is that, you know,
could you tell me, maybe, aboutanother product that you
probably, you know, research on,but you didn't include in the
book. And do you know, or couldyou shed any light on the India
(34:29):
story? I know that's not sort ofin the book, but I'm just
curious, you know, as a consumerof this product in India and so
many people, you're consumingit, if you could shed a little
bit of light on the Indiashadow? Sure.
Gardiner Harris (34:42):
So I, you know, I think one of the things that I
do want to say before I launchinto some of these other
products is that there is a,really, there's a character arc
in the book, as you know, Tara,about the company, the company
actually. Does start out the theyou know, the 20th century is
(35:04):
one of the most ethicalcompanies around. And when it is
run by the second generationthis guy, Robert Wood Johnson,
the second he really did do anadmirable job building this
extraordinarily ethical company.
And as you said, once the familyis sort of pushed aside, and
professional managers come in,it really starts to change. But
(35:26):
the change is really slow, andbaby powder is a great way of
looking at it, because, youknow, they they sold baby powder
for for 60 years, not knowingthat it was dangerous, I mean,
and not knowing that asbestoswas a problem and all that. And
then in the 1950s and 60s, theystart to get hints that there's
asbestos there and that asbestosis really a problem. But you can
(35:50):
kind of see they're like, well,but it's a small amount of
asbestos. What's the big deal?
And then as they realize thatsmall amounts of asbestos are a
very big deal. You know,microscopic quantities of
asbestos can kill you. Theystart covering it up, and the
company starts going down a darkpath. And they basically decide,
(36:14):
you know, in the late 70s,they're going to sell this
contaminated product, you know,to women and children and once
you kind of decide to do that,you can kind of start doing
anything. And that's when, youknow, the Tylenol stuff gets
worse. That's when they launch,you know, shortly thereafter
(36:35):
they launch EPO. They quicklyrealize EPO is very dangerous,
but they do it anyway. And soyou see this company, and by the
end, with vaginal mesh, youknow, well, before they launch
this product, they know it'sgoing to ruin the lives of women
like by then, they're so fardown This Dark Road, they're
(36:58):
they're sort of creatingproducts for evil, like, it's
just, it's just, you know, fromthe get go, they're doing
terrible things. And so some ofthe products, you know, there's
a, there's a whole cluster ofproducts that, this is a company
(37:19):
that calls itself the babycompany, and there's a whole
cluster of products thatactually have attacked the
health of babies and killedbabies. And then, you know, it's
also a company that sort ofbrags about that they're
friendly to women. They supportnursing programs. You know, one
of the reasons that women are sofond of it is that when you
(37:41):
leave the hospital with yourbaby, usually they have given
the hospital this sort ofpackage of Johnson baby
products, and you go home withyour baby in one arm and this
package of Johnson baby productsin the other. And the affection
toward Johnson and Johnson thatthat engenders really never
leaves women, because it theycome to kind of together this,
(38:04):
you know, this wonderful momentwhen you go home with your child
and you go home with Johnson andJohnson, and so I, I, I had a
bunch more products thatattacked women in their
reproductive organs. And I had afew more products that attack
babies, for instance, on thewomen. One there was this,
(38:27):
what's known as a powermorselator. If a woman gets a
hysterectomy, it's often a a avery serious procedure where
they cut open your abdomen toget to your uterus, and there's
long been a hope that that thesurgery could could be far more
(38:48):
laparoscopic, like a muchsmaller incision with a much
less recovery period. And soJohnson and Johnson developed
this power more Slater, whichwas basically this tiny little
blender that surgeons wouldinsert into, you know, a woman's
abdomen, and it wouldessentially, you know, blend up
(39:10):
the uterus in the woman andstuck out the the blended up
cells into this tube. But theproblem is that uterus is often
contain cancerous endometrialcells. You know, not just women
(39:30):
who have endometriosis, but youyou can sometimes have cancer in
your uterus. It's very wellcontained, so you don't know it.
And this is an what's known asan occult cancer. And so by
taking these little blenders andblending up your uterus, these
(39:50):
little blenders took thesecancerous cells and splattered
them all across the woman'sabdomen, inside of her,
essentially making it.
Impossible to treat. So itturned out, one out of 300 women
who had this procedure ended upgetting terrible cancer, and
most of them died. And thecompany knew this and kept it
(40:11):
secret, and you know, it's justsort of one of those where
you're like, Are you kidding me?
And and so I had a chapter onthat, and that went so that's
one of, I think, four or fiveproducts that that I, I would, I
wrote about in the originalversion of the manuscript, and
(40:34):
that that got taken out. A lotof the other outtakes were
patient stories. You know, I'm aformer reporter, you and I both
know Tara that the power ofthese stories is often through,
you know, the lens of regularpeople. And I, and I wanted the
book to have a lot more of thoseregular people voices. I spent a
(40:56):
lot of time trying findingpeople to whom these things had
happened, and the editors justsaid, look, it's just too long.
Gardner, we have to take a lotof these voices out. Again,
heartbreaking to me, but, but,but, you know, I think they know
what they're doing the Indiastory, you know, as you know,
(41:18):
India is endlessly complicated,right? I I have spent a lot of
time in India, and I often tellfriends that, you know, it's the
most interesting place on theplanet. You have 850 different
languages. You You know, peopleask me about Indian food, and
I'm like, I don't even know whatyou're talking about. Are you?
You know, because the regionalcuisines in India are so
(41:40):
spectacularly different andwonderful and so, you know, even
describing the India side ofthis story like is impossible,
because, you know, there wereparts of these stories in, you
know, in northern India, therewere parts of them in the
northeast, there were Parts ofthem in Southern India, each
(42:01):
time, slightly different thingsthat so I heard echoes of these
things happening in this part ofIndia or in that part of India.
But as you know, it's so hard totell, you know, I was a
correspondent from there, and myeditors would often ask me,
Well, what's the India side ofthings? And I would always be
like, I don't even know whatyou're asking me. You know? I
(42:23):
can tell you what the side ofthings is from Uttar Pradesh. I
can tell you what the side ofthings is from Chennai, but I
can't tell you what the Indiastory is because it's 1.4
billion people who, I'm sure youknow this Tara, but the genetic
differences between southernIndians and northern Indians is
wider than the differencesbetween Europeans and and and
(42:46):
Chinese. You know, your countryis so spectacularly diverse. You
know, the only place that ismore diverse than India is
Africa. So like, it's impossibleto tell what the India story is
and do it justice.
Tara Khandelwal (43:06):
Yeah, I think maybe this is an open call for
any writers out there listeningto go and research more about
this and expose what's happeningwith this company in India. I
would certainly like to know alot more about because when I
did little bit of research, Ididn't find anything except, you
know, amazing marketingcampaigns from this company. So
(43:26):
definitely would want to learnmore about that.
Gardiner Harris (43:28):
I do want to say one thing about the India
situation. I mean, as you know,India for decades has relied
almost exclusively on its publichealth system and hospital and
hospitals, and over the last 20years, there's really been this
development of private hospitalnetworks and private care. And
for certainly India's middleclass and its upper class, they
(43:50):
rely entirely on this privatesystem. And there are great
benefits to that. I don't wantto say that there aren't. But
you know, India is really kindof at a crossroads between, you
know, deciding whether to investmore in its public system, or
whether sort of to abandon thatand and just sort of allow the
(44:13):
private system to flourish. AndI, and I think you know, the
American experience with privatehealth care is is a cautionary
tale. And I, and I, and I, and Ithink India needs to sort of
really have, you know, a seriousconversation with itself about
(44:33):
whether it wants to go down theroad that it's been going down
for the last 15 to 20 years.
Tara Khandelwal (44:40):
I do agree. I think that it is a costly tale,
and it just shows you, sort of,you know how you can't there's a
limit to sort of capitalismversus healthcare, right? And if
you sort of mix the two, thenthe incentives are not aligned.
You want to make money, but youalso want to save you and you
but. Have to do it while doinggood, and you have to do it
(45:02):
while actually saving people'slives. I don't understand how
those two, you know, get somixed up and can't go hand in
hand. But anyway, that's alarger conversation. But I think
you're absolutely right that youknow, personally, also as a
consumer, I see that. I see somany companies now selling
supplements saying that I willhelp you sleep better. Protein
(45:22):
supplements, you know, all thesefads, lot of VC money coming in,
and honestly, we I'm very intofitness. So at least for me, I'm
very careful about what thesecompanies are telling me,
because I've also spoke like Ispeak to people like you, IV
books, but I mean, simply just,you know, in my own family, my
(45:45):
father's diabetic, and I see himconsuming, yeah, no, it's okay.
And my I see him consumingthings that have a lot of sugar
in them, but the label saysthat, oh, it's completely
healthy. It's organic. I lookand read the label, and I see,
okay, it's just sugar and otherforms, you know, but people just
don't know. They're just notaware. They don't know what
(46:06):
they're putting inside theirbodies, and it's becoming very
insidious. So I totally agree, Ithink that this is a cautionary
tale, and we really need to paymore attention. And would you be
publishing? You know, the storyis that you left out in the
personal stories, because to me,as well as a reader, obviously,
you know those human storiesthat you put into the book, they
(46:27):
were the most powerful, and theyreally brought home what you
were trying to say. So would yoube publishing them anywhere? Do
you think
Gardiner Harris (46:34):
maybe someday?
I have no immediate plans to doso I'm starting to work on my
next book, and I want to sort ofhead toward that, you know, I
think Tara, you, you and I bothhave, have spent our lives with
editors and and you know, theyare in the process is incredibly
painful, and I have oftenscreamed at my editors. No, it
(46:57):
can't be right. No. But, youknow, almost invariably, they
are right. And so I sort of, Ido, I have the original
manuscript. It's still with me.
And I, you know, I sometimesbring it to my heart to just,
you know, remember withfondness. So like I would say, I
(47:22):
took at least a year of my lifeto write and research, maybe a
year and a half these manythings that have never seen the
light of day, and that's a yearthat I will never get back. So
will I do something with those,maybe someday, but I have no
immediate plans. Thank you forbeing interested in them.
Tara Khandelwal (47:46):
Yeah, I think it was very interesting
conversation. And I think onething that also made me think
was that a lot of these are todo with women and babies and
women's health. And one of themost shocking things in the book
is, you know how Women's Healthis repeatedly sidelined, right
like when the Food, Drug andCosmetic Act was passed, it was
(48:08):
345, pages long, but only twopages dealt with products like
tack and powder, shampoos, blushcosmetics, part of it and this
oversight also, you know, youmentioned how it cost women
because of the things to bespoken about and the things that
you write about in the book. So,yeah, I think that a lot of it
is also just to do with howWomen's Health is overlooked,
(48:30):
right? And this company istapping into that aspect,
whereas women and babies, evenwhen you know the suffering is
right in front of people,
Gardiner Harris (48:39):
yeah, I mean baby powder really, the the
this, you know, the lowermessages and baby powder are
really kind of about racism andabout misogyny, right? Because
the for many people, they usetalcum powder, baby powder to
whiten their skin. You know, asyou know, in India, the biggest
(49:01):
selling cosmetics are skinwhiteners. And a a one of the
more basic ways of getting skinwhitening is to put talcum
powder on your skin. And so theysell it as a they sell it with
words like purity and the rest.
But what they're reallysignaling is you can be whiter
with this and and and one of thereasons that it's associated
with ovarian cancer so strongly,of course, is that there's a
(49:25):
very strong sense in the baby inbaby powder. In fact, it's
Johnson, and Johnson surveysshowed that is the most widely
recognized scent in the world,and women use it in their crotch
area to cover up vaginal smells,which they're embarrassed about.
And they're embarrassed about itbecause they're, you know, these
(49:45):
misogynistic messages thatthere's something wrong with
vaginal smells. So, you know,all of these products play into
some of the darkest strains of.
Of you know humanity.
Tara Khandelwal (50:02):
So for anyone who wants to write an expose or
dig into uncomfortable truth,obviously it's not easy, because
you are. It's sort of like Davidversus Goliath, you know, you're
one person against this hugesystem. What advice would you
give to people who want to writemore about these kind of things,
but are scared of theconsequences.
Gardiner Harris (50:24):
Try doing something else. Get counseling,
you know, don't, don't do it.
It's, it's, you know, it's hard.
It's, you fight, fighting. Thesystem almost never works, and
puts you in sort of tough youknow, I lived for five years
with these horrible storieshaunting me, and longer than
(50:46):
that, because, of course, youknow, it was really 20 years ago
that I started learning aboutthese stories and and having
them live inside of me. Youknow, there's something wrong
with me that that I can't reallylive without trying to get these
stories known and trying to getaccountability for the people
(51:09):
who have done such terriblethings. I think I, you know, I
grew up with daddy issues orsomething like that. You know,
I'm hoping that your listenersare healthier than I and can
sort of move on with otherthings. Because it's, I think
it's a really, I think it'sreally tough thing to do, and
(51:29):
it's, it's these sort of storiesare very hard to live with.
Tara Khandelwal (51:32):
I can't imagine, because sort of like
hearing them firsthand from allof these people, and just seeing
how pervasive you know this,this company is, and how
pervasive its tentacles are, andhow it reaches through
everything, policymakers,marketing, media, doctors, and
is still selling products thatare bad for you. It's really
(51:55):
heartbreaking. What youmentioned a next book. So I'm
just curious what, what is yournext book about?
Gardiner Harris (52:03):
I'm not going to talk about it, you know. It's
another troubled thing, and I'lljust, you know, I don't want to
warn you know the folks I'mlooking at yet until I have to
so but listen, Tara, I am sograteful for your interest and
so grateful that you read thebook so closely and that you
(52:25):
seem to like it so much. It's,you know, it's conversations
like this that really make mehappy that I did this effort,
and that, you know, the messageis getting out there, and I'm,
you know, so grateful that thereare people literally on the
other side of the world for me,who, who so appreciate the work.
Tara Khandelwal (52:48):
Oh, thank you so much for this conversation,
and for, you know, writing thisbook, because I think
definitely, you know, even if itreaches sort of a few people
here in India, maybe sort of, wecan be a little more careful
about kind of the products thatwe consume, and be a little more
cognizant, I think, in general,about, you know, looking at
(53:11):
labels and doing our ownresearch. Because there is this
whole market right now, whetherit's, you know, people selling
health food under wrong label,medicines, etc. I think we as
consumers now need to get a lotmore discerning, and I think
work like this will help usreally understand that. Yeah, we
also need to take it into ourhands and see what we are
(53:33):
putting into our bodies. Sothank you so much for this
conversation. It's been eyeopening and honestly a little
bit scary, but to my listeners,keep questioning, keep holding
people accountable, and nevertake safe at face value. And if
you're listening right now, dous a favor. Hit follow on
Spotify Apple podcast. You nevermiss an episode and tell us in
(53:54):
the comments, if you found abrand that you've trusted your
whole life and was actuallyhiding the truth, what would you
do? Thank you so much for cominghere and giving me your time. I
really, really appreciate theconversation.
Gardiner Harris (54:07):
Thank you, Tara, take care.
Tara Khandelwal (54:09):
Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books
and Beyond with bound. This
Michelle D'costa (54:13):
podcast is created by bound, a company that
helps you grow through story.
Find us at bound India on allsocial media platforms tune
Tara Khandelwal (54:22):
in every Wednesday as we peek into the
lives and minds of somebrilliant authors from India and
South Asia. You.
Hi everyone. If you're new here, this is the
perfect episode to start with,but before we dive in, don't
forget to follow and rate us onSpotify, on Apple podcast. So
let's talk about Johnson andJohnson. For many of us, the
name means baby powder, bandaids and that comforting newborn
spell. It's tied to ourchildhood, to care, to safety,
(00:24):
right? But behind this wholesomeimage is a company that has
hidden the truth, lied tocustomers and endangered
millions and millions of lives.
I didn't know this, and todaywe're speaking to Pulitzer Prize
nominated NYT journalist GardnerHarris, he spent years
uncovering the story and writtenabout it in his new book. It's a
(00:45):
deep dive into Johnson andJohnson's century long history,
from its inspiring beginnings toall of these shocking scandals
that have dropped the company.
And what I really liked aboutthis book is not just this jaw
dropping revelations and thisexpose, but also how it's
written, because it's very grip.
It's not only very gripping, butit's empathetic and it's human.
(01:07):
So Gardner, I'm so excited tohave you here today. Welcome to
Books and Beyond.
Gardiner Harris (01:14):
I'm so glad to be here. I'm honored. Thank you.
Tara Khandelwal (01:19):
So you know, let's start with just the
opening of the book, becausethat is so hard hitting. You are
at the airport, and you meetthis sales rep from Johnson and
Johnson, and she is completelydisillusioned because she has
worked with a doctor who hasprescribed her own nephew the
drug that she is selling, whichis used to treat young adults
(01:40):
who have mental health issueslike schizophrenia, and she
knows that her nephew didn'tneed this drug, but her sister
and her relatives have haveinsisted that he have this drug,
and the side effects have beenso so bad. He's put on a lot of
weight. He's become a listlessyoung boy, and she has seen the
(02:01):
negative effects of her work andher marketing efforts now in
real time. And I think thatscene was just so gut wrenching.
And I can just imagine sort ofyou in that airport, hearing
that story, and then, you know,maybe wanting to uncover more of
this, because you also, as acoincidence, grew up in the town
(02:24):
where Johnson, Johnson had a lotof its headquarters and
factories. So can you tell meabout a sort of how the story
then led to your decision toresearch on this book, and how
and why? Why did you decide touncover the story in the first
place.
Gardiner Harris (02:41):
Well, again, thanks for having me. I mean,
you know, Tara, I think one ofthe interesting things is
journalists get known for thestories that they do, but we all
have a million stories that weknow are incredible, that we get
part of the story, but we don'tget enough. And that was one of
(03:04):
those stories. That was one ofthose, you know, the fish that
got away. It was a great story.
This woman told me, but shewouldn't give me permission to
use her name. I really couldn'tdo the story without a name
attached to it, and there justwasn't enough there. So it was a
failure that haunted me for avery long time. Now, I will tell
(03:29):
you that because of what shetold me, I ended up spending
years trying to find a way totalk about the use of
antipsychotics in children, andended up doing a series of
stories on the issue in the NewYork Times, not using her, of
course, or her story, but beinginspired by her story. And those
(03:52):
stories ended up leading tolegislative changes in the
United States and all the restthat I didn't really actually
talk about in the book, becauseI didn't want to make myself a
character in the book. But itwas, it was that moment with her
was one of the most importantmoments in my life. It led not
only to a series of stories inthe New York Times that led to
(04:15):
legislative changing UnitedStates, but it really planted
the seed. It was one of the mostimportant precursors to this
book. There were others just theyear before my son was born. And
unfortunately, I don't know ifyou're a parent, but my first
son spent three or four days inthe NICU unit, you know, the
(04:40):
neonatal intensive care. He hislife was, you know, hanging by a
thread, as often happens. He wasborn a little bit early.
Couldn't nurse. So we had this,my wife and I had this
heartbreaking. A moment in ourlives when we weren't sure
(05:01):
whether our son would survive.
He did. He came home hugerelief. And this was back in the
day when there wasn't anythingsuch as paternity leave, which
is still true in much of India.
And so I went right back to workafter my son was born, and I, in
just the following days, got ahuge tranche of documents from a
(05:23):
source showing that Johnson andJohnson had spent years selling
a heartburn drug as if it wasreally good for preemie infants.
In fact, the company knew thatthe heartburn drug didn't help
preemie infants, there was,there was no benefit to them,
and in fact, had this sideeffects that that occasionally
(05:46):
killed them. But they were sosuccessful at selling this drug
called propulsive that 1/5 ofall preemies in the United
States in the in the late 1990swere prescribed this drug, and
I'm reading these documentswhere inside Johnson and
Johnson, they know exactly whatthey're doing, which is they are
(06:06):
they are harming babies, anddead babies start piling up and
piling up and piling up. And thecompany inside has this debate,
wait, all these babies aredying, we're not helping anyone.
Why are we doing this? And theirbosses are responding, we're
doing this because it makes us alot of money. And I'm reading
(06:27):
this, my son has just been inthe NICU, and I and I honestly
cannot believe that Americanexecutives are willingly
allowing and, in fact, acting ina way that will kill these
babies for money. And I just, Ijust couldn't believe it. And
(06:49):
I'll tell you one other thingthat really sort of stuck with
me, that led to the book, andthis is something that where
India plays a really importantrole. You'll remember Tara that
in the late 1990s ARVs, theseantiretroviral drugs, come out,
and they end up saving the livesof HIV patients up until that
(07:14):
point, up until, really, 1996when the cocktail of ARVs came.
You know, AIDS was a deathsentence. And then in 96 really,
in 97 these cocktails ofmedicines come out, and they're
saving HIV patients lives, andmaking HIV really a chronic
(07:35):
illness instead of a deathsentence. But these drugs are so
expensive, they cost roughly$20,000 a year, and you have to
take them for the rest of yourlife that that you know nobody
really outside of these well,very wealthy countries can
afford them, as you willremember, this was the time when
(07:56):
HIV infections were sweepingacross Africa, and Africa was
facing essentially a deathsentence. There were predictions
that half of the Africanpopulation would die in the
next, you know, 10 years or so,and so there was this huge
controversy where the companieswere bludgeoned by advocates,
(08:19):
you have to make these drugsavailable to Indian generic
companies to copy and allow themto sell and distribute in
Africa. And the pharmaceuticalindustry essentially buckled,
and a program was set up at theUnited Nations called UN AIDS to
collect the patents of thesedrugs, give them to people like
(08:43):
my friend, Yusuf Hamid at Ciplato copy and then distribute in
Africa. And once the price ofthe generics got below $1 a day,
they knew that they had themoney to save essentially the
continent. So all the companiesgave up their patents. The
Indian companies copied thepills and and, and, you know,
(09:06):
more than 20 million lives havebeen saved. The one exception to
this story was Johnson andJohnson. Johnson and Johnson was
one of three or four companiesthat were major manufacturers of
AIDS drugs and Johnson, andJohnson simply refused to
provide its drugs and its drugpatents to this program. And so
(09:29):
this happy, good news storyabout the pharmaceutical
industry doing the right thinghad this one little asterisk
that was kind of unbelievable tome, because I grew up, as I told
you, in this town, right nearJohnson and Johnson's
headquarters. I grew up amongstkids whose parents worked there.
Everybody really believed inthis company as this incredibly
(09:51):
ethical company, and yet theyweren't playing ball in the
same. Living of the Africancontinent. Like, how is this
possible? So I had the HIVthing, I had my own son, and
then I meet this woman, and itwas enough for me to sort of be
like, Okay, this company notonly is not the ethical Paragon
(10:14):
that I thought it was, but is,in fact, exactly the opposite.
You know, I covered the entirepharmaceutical company industry,
and it's gotten, for goodreason, a bad reputation for
doing some bad things. Therewere some 300 or so guilty
pleas, more than $20 billion infines. But there are actually
(10:36):
some good companies in theindustry. There are some bad
companies. There are some goodcompanies. And I realized that
Johnson and Johnson had thisstrange thing where, on the one
hand it was it had the bestreputation. It was beloved. It
routinely tops all these surveysof being the most admired
(10:57):
corporation in the world, but onthe other hand, was the worst of
the worst in how it actuallybehaved.
Tara Khandelwal (11:07):
Those stories are just very chilling. And you
know, when I was reading yourbook, I was just thinking about
how capitalism has completelydistorted the industry, and I
don't think that's somethingthat we really speak about in
India, just because I don'tthink there's enough data on
this. I don't think there'senough research happening. So I
see a lot of movies, a lot of TVshows, a lot of news about the
(11:30):
American Pharmaceuticalcompanies. You know, you also,
you mentioned this in your book,and I've seen it on television,
that in the movies, how thesesales reps bribe these doctors
to wrongfully prescribemedicine, and it's almost
standard practice. And I'm justthinking, here we go to doctors
to help us, and then those arethe same people that are
actually giving us somethingthat's so bad for us, like, how
(11:52):
do you even know what's rightand what to consume in a world
like this?
Gardiner Harris (11:58):
I think it's really difficult. And that's you
know, one of the most importantreasons that I wrote this book
is to give people tools tounderstand really the healthcare
system, the dynamics, theincentives, why you really
should be skeptical of yourdoctor, even this person that
(12:19):
you think is so well educated,someone you should trust. You
know, in the United States, thepharmaceutical industry gives
roughly $3 billion directly todoctors, for those doctors to
serve as part time drug salesreps. So at you know, on the one
(12:40):
hand, they're supposed to bethese learned intermediaries for
you, which is they know moreinformation than you, and
they're supposed to becompletely agnostic about what
drugs you take, because they'renot supposed to have a financial
incentive in their decisionmaking. That's the definition of
a learned intermediary. But bytaking the money and and and
(13:05):
listening to these pitches, theyare neither learned because they
their, their their ownunderstanding gets distorted,
nor are they a true intermediarybecause they're actually working
for the drug or the devicecompany, so it really distorts
(13:26):
the heart of the healthcaresystem, which is the trust
between a patient and theirdoctor. And until that changes,
the kind of disasters that Idescribe in the book will only
continue, and I wanted to takejust a moment to, you know, just
talk about what those disastersare. You know, the first one
(13:49):
that I talk about is, isJohnson's baby powder, and the
fact that the company has knownfor 70 years that its baby
powder has been contaminatedwith asbestos, and yet sold this
product to mothers for theirbabies. And you know, at the
height of the popularity of thisproduct, half of all babies in
(14:10):
the United States, and I'm suresome huge share in India, had
their bottoms dusted withJohnson's baby powder. And then
I tell the story about Tylenol.
And you know, Tylenol is seenas, widely seen as the safest
pain pill out there. In fact, itis by far the most dangerous
(14:31):
over the counter medicine sold.
It causes more death and injurythan all other over the counter
medicines combined. So I I showthe story of how Tylenol got to
this terribly dangerous spaceand and hopefully provide
(14:54):
warnings to people about beingcareful about using this drug
and. I walked through a seriesof other prescription drugs and
devices. The first is EPO, thatwas the Johnson and Johnson sold
as a cancer drug, even thoughJohnson and Johnson knew that it
was actually Miracle Grow totumors. So instead of curing
(15:16):
your cancer, it actuallysecretly made it worse. And they
knew this, kept it secret forsomething like 15 years, and
around 500,000 Americans died asa result. And then I tell the
story that that you and Istarted this with Risperdal and
antipsychotic, and how thecompany illegally targeted the
(15:39):
smallest of children with thisdrug and the oldest of the
elderly, and that, you know, theit's routinely talked about that
the opioid crisis is the worstpublic health crisis in American
history. It's not. It's theantipsychotic crisis that has
killed more than a millionAmericans easily, and to this
(15:59):
day, kills three times as manypatients as opioids and and I
talk about the lies that thatJohnson and Johnson told
criminal lies. They eventuallypleaded guilty to criminal
charges in the marketing ofthese medicines and, and, you
know, covered up their theirtheir actions by telling
(16:22):
doctors, you know, don't worry,no one is ever going to catch
you. And I know this becauseI've seen the grand jury sworn
testimony of the company's salesrepresentatives who did this,
you know, and then I walkedthrough the opioid crisis, you
know. I'm sure you've seen someof the TV shows about the
Sacklers and Purdue pharmacausing the opioid crisis. And
(16:46):
everybody thinks that theSacklers and Purdue pharma are
the worst of the worst. Youknow, as a former Johnson and
Johnson executive told me,they're the hikers compared to
Johnson and Johnson, even justwhen you look at the opioids,
you know, at the height of theopioid prescription epidemic in
the United States, about 10% ofthe bodies that showed up in
(17:07):
morgues had a Purdue pharmaproduct in their system. 60% had
a J and J product in theirsystem. So why is it that the
media, particularly the Americanmedia, has sold this story that
Purdue pharma and the Sacklersare sort of the sole responsible
parties for this epidemic. Howis it that Johnson and Johnson
(17:28):
has gotten away with its muchmore important role, and nobody
knows it, and that's a reallyimportant part of the book, is
the incredible failure of all ofthe institutions that should
have caught this company,stopped them and brought
accountability. You know, thefirst one, obviously, is the
(17:50):
FDA, has played a disastrousrole in enabling these, these,
these terrible moments. And thenthe American media, you know, I
worked for the New York Times, Iworked for the Wall Street
Journal. We should have done amuch better job, but Johnson and
Johnson is one of the largestadvertisers in the world. They
have enormous influence onAmerican reporters. You know,
(18:15):
the kind of influence thatPurdue pharma, this tiny one
product company, couldn't hopeto get which is one of the big
reasons that Purdue pharma wasthe focus of all those stories,
and not j and j and then I tellstories about metal on metal,
hip implants and vaginal mesh.
You know, two huge disastersthat, by the way, had enormous
echo effects in India. You know,millions of patients in India
(18:41):
were affected by those productsas well. And in fact, there's a
new book out about just thevaginal mesh scandal in India.
So, you know, I didn't reallytell the India story in most of
these things. It's such acomplicated story that I decided
to focus almost exclusively onthe United States, but there is
(19:02):
an Indian Echo to each one ofthese disasters. And you know,
one of those echoes, the vaginalmesh, one has its own book out
right now in India. But, youknow, I thought you would ask me
that I don't know offhand. I'lltell you in a minute. Yeah, the
book has been sent to me, andit's wonderful. Anyway, it's the
(19:26):
book has this. And then, ofcourse, I tell the the covid
vaccine story and how, you know,everyone's sort of in the United
States, covid vaccines fromPfizer and moderna are suddenly
controversial, but nobody reallyrevisits the J and J vaccine,
which is was by far the moredangerous of all of them. You
(19:49):
know, it caused a clottingdisorder. It caused Guillain
Barre Syndrome. It wasn'tparticularly effective. So these
dangers not. Made no sense, andit was withdrawn. Whereas, you
know, Pfizer's and moderna'svaccines, obviously, are
continued to be sold around theworld.
Tara Khandelwal (20:10):
I think that I really like the way that the
book is structured, because, asyou said, you go through each of
these tragedies honestly. When Iread the baby powder section,
and realized that it had so muchabestos, which leads to ovarian
cancer, and you give those casestudies, I had no idea. And I
did a Google search about babypowder in India, and it's being
(20:35):
sold in abundance here. And thenI looked at the labels, and the
labels are no chemicals,organic, all of these like
beautiful words that will compelmothers to keep buying it. I
know that in every Indianhousehold there is Johnson baby
powder. I know that I have grownup with it, and I have two
(20:55):
younger siblings that I knowI've seen my mother use it
copiously on them. And just tothink that these everyday
household products can cause somuch harm is insane to me. And I
think that the EPO drug chapter,where you know, you know that
this drug actually causes tumorsto grow, but you are setting it
as an anti cancer drug, is justso crazy to me. And my biggest
(21:19):
question when I was reading thisbook, and then you also talk
about, yeah, the drug thatcauses male breasts in young
boys and leaves them disfigured.
So all of these things, thishistory of negligence that you
have covered. So my biggestquestion that when I was reading
this book is, you know, how comenobody is talking about this.
How come, even in India,Johnson, Johnson products are
(21:40):
the pinnacle of consumer goods,you know, for babies, for band
aids, all of this. Nobody istalking about any of this.
Before your book, I had no ideaany of this was happening. You
know, touch upon it in the booka lot. You know, the complicit
FDA, how Johnson, Johnsonthreatens to pull advertising
(22:02):
out of TV networks and mediacompanies if they threaten to
expose anything about this. ButI wanted to ask, you know, why
isn't this spoken about? Mod?
What can we do to sort of getthis out there? A little bit
more? First of all,
Gardiner Harris (22:19):
you know, it's not out there, because this
company, arguably its corecompetency, is cover ups and
keeping itself out of the newsfor all of these disasters.
Tara, you're a book person. Youknow this, particularly in
(22:40):
business books, 90% of businessbooks are these positive books
that tell you stories that youalready know, like how Amazon
was created and conquered theworld and why it's such a great
company. How you know Facebookwas founded. You know, they're
these sort of laudatory bookstelling you stories you you
already know, but giving younice little details about them.
(23:03):
And then maybe 9.9% of businessbooks are how this company that
collapsed really collapsed. Butin all of these 99.9% of the
business books, you go into thebook knowing how it's going to
end. You know the story to beginwith, because it's been covered
endlessly in newspapers. So, youknow, the book about Enron
(23:25):
collapsing in fraud. You've beenreading about this, you know,
it's fraud, and you and and it'snot particularly surprising. I
think one of the problems withmy book is, and I apologize if
this sounds arrogant, but itsoriginality. You know, I'm
telling you a story that youreally haven't heard. You know,
(23:46):
I didn't write all these storiesin the New York Times. I really
kind of wasn't allowed to andand so I am talking to you about
a company that you think is thegreatest, you think is the most
admired. And I'm actuallytelling you, it's just the
opposite. It's one of the greathistory's greatest serial
(24:06):
killers. And I think there's akind of a disconnect that
happens, like, I didn't get areview in the New York Times,
you know, despite all my yearsworking there, I didn't get a
review in The Wall StreetJournal, despite all my years
working there, part of thatmight be because I'm critical of
both papers, but I think a lotof it is just like, What am I
supposed to do with this? Youknow, I accuse Johnson and
(24:28):
Johnson of contributing to thedeaths of more than 2 million
Americans. You know, it's awholly original charge, and it's
because I got epidemiologists toadd up dead babies and dead
adults for me, but again, it'snothing that's been out there
before, and I think a lot ofjournalists are just like, I
don't even know what to do withthis. So it didn't get kind of
(24:53):
the attention in the bookreviews. It didn't really make
news, because I think you. Ijust think it is so unusual and
it, you know, it took me a longtime to persuade my publisher
that, you know, that we neededto go through this. We went
through huge legal reviewsbecause this story is so
(25:16):
original, you know, we wereworried we'd get sued by, you
know, Johnson, and Johnson, andmany of the people we met, was
Tara Khandelwal (25:24):
gonna ask you about that. So, yeah, was there
any backlash?
Gardiner Harris (25:28):
You know, we haven't been, and I think it,
you know, I think the company isjust hoping that it kind of goes
away. And I'm sure they're,they're sort of worried that if
they sued, it would just give itmore attention. But, you know,
that's one of my explanation.
You know, it is. It has beendisappointing to me that my
(25:48):
former colleagues, you know, Imake news here, for instance. As
you may know, in my bio, Isubsequently, you know, I was a
reporter in India for a while,and I came back and was a White
House correspondent for The NewYork Times. So I got to sort of
the top of the of the mountainon journalism. And you know,
(26:09):
when you're in those positions,it's not unusual for you to get
secret documents. You know,national security documents.
What is unusual is to getdocuments from grand juries in
the United States. They are thelast truly secret institutions
here. The New York Times has nothad the New York Times, the Wall
Street Journal, Fox News, Idon't believe there's been a
(26:33):
large media organization theUnited States that had that has
had a single Grand Jury filefrom a single grand jury for
more than 50 years. I havehundreds of Grand Jury files
from three separate grand juriesinvolving Johnson and Johnson.
That is one of the reasons why Ican make these extraordinary
(26:55):
charges, because I have, youknow, the secret grand jury,
sworn testimony of companyexecutives and and again, I
think my colleagues are justlike they don't know what to do
about that, because it's, it'snothing they've ever seen.
Tara Khandelwal (27:16):
I think these things take a long time to sort
of come into the limelight, andthen when it does happen, it's
like a juggernaut. And Idefinitely think word of mouth
and readers like me, who youknow, I'm going to post about
this, and more people are goingto read about it, and then sort
of sooner or later, everyoneknows about it. These things
(27:37):
can't remain secret for thatlong, and you have put it out
there for the whole world tosee. And I think it's so
explosive, and it's so shocking,and it's so ubiquitous their
products that everyone is goingto want to know about this,
because it's scary. I wouldn'twant any of my friends to use
Johnson baby powder on theirchildren at all. I would want
them against that my husband's Iwas talking to my husband, and I
(28:01):
was talking to him aboutTylenol, and he said, because
his mother works a lot in theUS, and he said that she used to
actually buy Tylenol and get itback to India, because she
thought it was so safe and andhave it, you know. So there's
everyone. These products havetouched everybody's lives, and
it's just so scary. But comingto, you know, the research part
(28:22):
of the book, you mentioned thatyou had these sources that have
given you these pages of pagesfrom these grand juries, which
is never the case you also andthe book is, is, is long. It's
568, pages with 200 pages justfor notes, References and
sources. So it's really, reallybad research. You're not making
these claims without backing itup with proper evidence. You
(28:46):
look at case files, articles,personal accounts, private
company documents. You know, oneexample is Surat. Was a letter
by Dr Alfred Wiener, aconsultant to J and J, which
revealed that the company andeven FDA ignored warnings about
talc. So what was your researchprocess like? Let's come to the
writing of this book. How didyou begin the research process,
(29:08):
and how did you begin piecingthis all together? Well,
Gardiner Harris (29:10):
Tara, you know, one of my great flaws as a
journalist is that I have alwaysspent too much time on
reporting. You know, I alwayssort of want to find the next
cool thing before just sort ofsitting down and writing. And
this happened in spades on thisproject. I, you know, it took me
(29:33):
five years of work, and a bigreason is that I just couldn't
stop digging. You know, I justwanted the next documents that
talk to the next executive. Ijust kept digging and digging
and digging and, you know, Ithe, you know, 95% of the book
is, you know, I probably couldhave done this book in a year,
(29:57):
you know, and save myself, youknow, just. So much agony, but I
did want to find that stuff. Andyou know, I do have a website,
Gardner harris.com that wasactually set up by several
friends of mine in India. Andthe website has a document
section where I put nearly allthese documents. Now, there are
some secret documents, like thegrand jury, ones that I cannot
(30:20):
reveal, for fear that it mightreveal my the pattern of
documents might reveal mysourcing. But nearly all of the
other you know, there arehundreds of 1000s of pages of
documents that you can go lookyourself. You can do your own
research on this, and thatincludes trial transcripts, that
includes internal 1000s of ofinternal company documents that
(30:45):
I got from sources and, youknow, interviews with people, I
ended up interviewing hundredsof executives and former
executives, in part because thegrand jury files actually had
employee rosters with theirnames and cell phone numbers. So
I could call these people, youknow, I, I, I will tell you that
(31:07):
I looked throughout theserosters for that sales rep who I
met at the airport, and I neverdid find her again.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure why.
So, you know, one of my greathopes is that she reads the book
and sees herself mentioned, and,and, and, you know, reaches out
(31:30):
at some point, but that, youknow, that's not happened, but
the process was essentially oneof, you know, reading documents,
going to see people talking tosources. You know, I did years
of that sort of research beforeI really wrote the first word
(31:51):
and then started gradually. Youknow, writing sections of the
book, I will tell you that theoriginal manuscript was roughly
twice as long as the book youhave before you. I had even more
products. Again. Tara, this iswhat I do. I go overboard. And
thank God I had some really goodeditors who said, you know,
(32:15):
Gardner, okay, I know you got tostop. And, you know, as it is,
you've got way too much, andwe're going to have to cut this
in half, which was a terriblypainful process to me. There was
a lot of stories lost that Ithought were really important
and and, you know, the thing is,Tara, the reason why this book
(32:38):
is so important is I did acouple of these. I wrote about a
couple of these disasters in theNew York Times. And each time,
people would say, Oh, well, thecompany might have made a
mistake in this one instance,but it's a great company. So,
you know, I'm not changing mymind about it. And so to kind of
hit, you know, to deal with thatobjection, I was like, Okay, I
(33:02):
need to tell you, you know,originally I thought I need to
tell you 15 different stories.
You know, it's not criminalityand lies aren't the exception
for this company. It's the rule.
And so that's my hope is that bytelling you in a very
dispassionate way exactly whathappened with each one of these,
(33:25):
of these disasters and that costmillions of lives, that you will
see that this is A company thatthat that is really, you know,
essentially, a mafia family,
Tara Khandelwal (33:44):
yeah. And I also like that in the beginning
of the book, you speak a littlebit about how it was set up and
the history of that family, andhow, you know, the brothers took
it over, and by the thirdgeneration, then, you know, the
the third generation couldn'treally run it, and then it
started becoming professionallymanaged, and like that piece of
(34:07):
business history as well, Iwanted to ask you about all the
things that you couldn't putinside the book, because I'm
sure there's a lot two things,actually. One is that, you know,
could you tell me, maybe, aboutanother product that you
probably, you know, research on,but you didn't include in the
book. And do you know, or couldyou shed any light on the India
(34:29):
story? I know that's not sort ofin the book, but I'm just
curious, you know, as a consumerof this product in India and so
many people, you're consumingit, if you could shed a little
bit of light on the Indiashadow? Sure.
Gardiner Harris (34:42):
So I, you know, I think one of the things that I
do want to say before I launchinto some of these other
products is that there is a,really, there's a character arc
in the book, as you know, Tara,about the company, the company
actually. Does start out the theyou know, the 20th century is
(35:04):
one of the most ethicalcompanies around. And when it is
run by the second generationthis guy, Robert Wood Johnson,
the second he really did do anadmirable job building this
extraordinarily ethical company.
And as you said, once the familyis sort of pushed aside, and
professional managers come in,it really starts to change. But
(35:26):
the change is really slow, andbaby powder is a great way of
looking at it, because, youknow, they they sold baby powder
for for 60 years, not knowingthat it was dangerous, I mean,
and not knowing that asbestoswas a problem and all that. And
then in the 1950s and 60s, theystart to get hints that there's
asbestos there and that asbestosis really a problem. But you can
(35:50):
kind of see they're like, well,but it's a small amount of
asbestos. What's the big deal?
And then as they realize thatsmall amounts of asbestos are a
very big deal. You know,microscopic quantities of
asbestos can kill you. Theystart covering it up, and the
company starts going down a darkpath. And they basically decide,
(36:14):
you know, in the late 70s,they're going to sell this
contaminated product, you know,to women and children and once
you kind of decide to do that,you can kind of start doing
anything. And that's when, youknow, the Tylenol stuff gets
worse. That's when they launch,you know, shortly thereafter
(36:35):
they launch EPO. They quicklyrealize EPO is very dangerous,
but they do it anyway. And soyou see this company, and by the
end, with vaginal mesh, youknow, well, before they launch
this product, they know it'sgoing to ruin the lives of women
like by then, they're so fardown This Dark Road, they're
(36:58):
they're sort of creatingproducts for evil, like, it's
just, it's just, you know, fromthe get go, they're doing
terrible things. And so some ofthe products, you know, there's
a, there's a whole cluster ofproducts that, this is a company
(37:19):
that calls itself the babycompany, and there's a whole
cluster of products thatactually have attacked the
health of babies and killedbabies. And then, you know, it's
also a company that sort ofbrags about that they're
friendly to women. They supportnursing programs. You know, one
of the reasons that women are sofond of it is that when you
(37:41):
leave the hospital with yourbaby, usually they have given
the hospital this sort ofpackage of Johnson baby
products, and you go home withyour baby in one arm and this
package of Johnson baby productsin the other. And the affection
toward Johnson and Johnson thatthat engenders really never
leaves women, because it theycome to kind of together this,
(38:04):
you know, this wonderful momentwhen you go home with your child
and you go home with Johnson andJohnson, and so I, I, I had a
bunch more products thatattacked women in their
reproductive organs. And I had afew more products that attack
babies, for instance, on thewomen. One there was this,
(38:27):
what's known as a powermorselator. If a woman gets a
hysterectomy, it's often a a avery serious procedure where
they cut open your abdomen toget to your uterus, and there's
long been a hope that that thesurgery could could be far more
(38:48):
laparoscopic, like a muchsmaller incision with a much
less recovery period. And soJohnson and Johnson developed
this power more Slater, whichwas basically this tiny little
blender that surgeons wouldinsert into, you know, a woman's
abdomen, and it wouldessentially, you know, blend up
(39:10):
the uterus in the woman andstuck out the the blended up
cells into this tube. But theproblem is that uterus is often
contain cancerous endometrialcells. You know, not just women
(39:30):
who have endometriosis, but youyou can sometimes have cancer in
your uterus. It's very wellcontained, so you don't know it.
And this is an what's known asan occult cancer. And so by
taking these little blenders andblending up your uterus, these
(39:50):
little blenders took thesecancerous cells and splattered
them all across the woman'sabdomen, inside of her,
essentially making it.
Impossible to treat. So itturned out, one out of 300 women
who had this procedure ended upgetting terrible cancer, and
most of them died. And thecompany knew this and kept it
(40:11):
secret, and you know, it's justsort of one of those where
you're like, Are you kidding me?
And and so I had a chapter onthat, and that went so that's
one of, I think, four or fiveproducts that that I, I would, I
wrote about in the originalversion of the manuscript, and
(40:34):
that that got taken out. A lotof the other outtakes were
patient stories. You know, I'm aformer reporter, you and I both
know Tara that the power ofthese stories is often through,
you know, the lens of regularpeople. And I, and I wanted the
book to have a lot more of thoseregular people voices. I spent a
(40:56):
lot of time trying findingpeople to whom these things had
happened, and the editors justsaid, look, it's just too long.
Gardner, we have to take a lotof these voices out. Again,
heartbreaking to me, but, but,but, you know, I think they know
what they're doing the Indiastory, you know, as you know,
(41:18):
India is endlessly complicated,right? I I have spent a lot of
time in India, and I often tellfriends that, you know, it's the
most interesting place on theplanet. You have 850 different
languages. You You know, peopleask me about Indian food, and
I'm like, I don't even know whatyou're talking about. Are you?
You know, because the regionalcuisines in India are so
(41:40):
spectacularly different andwonderful and so, you know, even
describing the India side ofthis story like is impossible,
because, you know, there wereparts of these stories in, you
know, in northern India, therewere parts of them in the
northeast, there were Parts ofthem in Southern India, each
(42:01):
time, slightly different thingsthat so I heard echoes of these
things happening in this part ofIndia or in that part of India.
But as you know, it's so hard totell, you know, I was a
correspondent from there, and myeditors would often ask me,
Well, what's the India side ofthings? And I would always be
like, I don't even know whatyou're asking me. You know? I
(42:23):
can tell you what the side ofthings is from Uttar Pradesh. I
can tell you what the side ofthings is from Chennai, but I
can't tell you what the Indiastory is because it's 1.4
billion people who, I'm sure youknow this Tara, but the genetic
differences between southernIndians and northern Indians is
wider than the differencesbetween Europeans and and and
(42:46):
Chinese. You know, your countryis so spectacularly diverse. You
know, the only place that ismore diverse than India is
Africa. So like, it's impossibleto tell what the India story is
and do it justice.
Tara Khandelwal (43:06):
Yeah, I think maybe this is an open call for
any writers out there listeningto go and research more about
this and expose what's happeningwith this company in India. I
would certainly like to know alot more about because when I
did little bit of research, Ididn't find anything except, you
know, amazing marketingcampaigns from this company. So
(43:26):
definitely would want to learnmore about that.
Gardiner Harris (43:28):
I do want to say one thing about the India
situation. I mean, as you know,India for decades has relied
almost exclusively on its publichealth system and hospital and
hospitals, and over the last 20years, there's really been this
development of private hospitalnetworks and private care. And
for certainly India's middleclass and its upper class, they
(43:50):
rely entirely on this privatesystem. And there are great
benefits to that. I don't wantto say that there aren't. But
you know, India is really kindof at a crossroads between, you
know, deciding whether to investmore in its public system, or
whether sort of to abandon thatand and just sort of allow the
(44:13):
private system to flourish. AndI, and I think you know, the
American experience with privatehealth care is is a cautionary
tale. And I, and I, and I, and Ithink India needs to sort of
really have, you know, a seriousconversation with itself about
(44:33):
whether it wants to go down theroad that it's been going down
for the last 15 to 20 years.
Tara Khandelwal (44:40):
I do agree. I think that it is a costly tale,
and it just shows you, sort of,you know how you can't there's a
limit to sort of capitalismversus healthcare, right? And if
you sort of mix the two, thenthe incentives are not aligned.
You want to make money, but youalso want to save you and you
but. Have to do it while doinggood, and you have to do it
(45:02):
while actually saving people'slives. I don't understand how
those two, you know, get somixed up and can't go hand in
hand. But anyway, that's alarger conversation. But I think
you're absolutely right that youknow, personally, also as a
consumer, I see that. I see somany companies now selling
supplements saying that I willhelp you sleep better. Protein
(45:22):
supplements, you know, all thesefads, lot of VC money coming in,
and honestly, we I'm very intofitness. So at least for me, I'm
very careful about what thesecompanies are telling me,
because I've also spoke like Ispeak to people like you, IV
books, but I mean, simply just,you know, in my own family, my
(45:45):
father's diabetic, and I see himconsuming, yeah, no, it's okay.
And my I see him consumingthings that have a lot of sugar
in them, but the label saysthat, oh, it's completely
healthy. It's organic. I lookand read the label, and I see,
okay, it's just sugar and otherforms, you know, but people just
don't know. They're just notaware. They don't know what
(46:06):
they're putting inside theirbodies, and it's becoming very
insidious. So I totally agree, Ithink that this is a cautionary
tale, and we really need to paymore attention. And would you be
publishing? You know, the storyis that you left out in the
personal stories, because to me,as well as a reader, obviously,
you know those human storiesthat you put into the book, they
(46:27):
were the most powerful, and theyreally brought home what you
were trying to say. So would yoube publishing them anywhere? Do
you think
Gardiner Harris (46:34):
maybe someday?
I have no immediate plans to doso I'm starting to work on my
next book, and I want to sort ofhead toward that, you know, I
think Tara, you, you and I bothhave, have spent our lives with
editors and and you know, theyare in the process is incredibly
painful, and I have oftenscreamed at my editors. No, it
(46:57):
can't be right. No. But, youknow, almost invariably, they
are right. And so I sort of, Ido, I have the original
manuscript. It's still with me.
And I, you know, I sometimesbring it to my heart to just,
you know, remember withfondness. So like I would say, I
(47:22):
took at least a year of my lifeto write and research, maybe a
year and a half these manythings that have never seen the
light of day, and that's a yearthat I will never get back. So
will I do something with those,maybe someday, but I have no
immediate plans. Thank you forbeing interested in them.
Tara Khandelwal (47:46):
Yeah, I think it was very interesting
conversation. And I think onething that also made me think
was that a lot of these are todo with women and babies and
women's health. And one of themost shocking things in the book
is, you know how Women's Healthis repeatedly sidelined, right
like when the Food, Drug andCosmetic Act was passed, it was
(48:08):
345, pages long, but only twopages dealt with products like
tack and powder, shampoos, blushcosmetics, part of it and this
oversight also, you know, youmentioned how it cost women
because of the things to bespoken about and the things that
you write about in the book. So,yeah, I think that a lot of it
is also just to do with howWomen's Health is overlooked,
(48:30):
right? And this company istapping into that aspect,
whereas women and babies, evenwhen you know the suffering is
right in front of people,
Gardiner Harris (48:39):
yeah, I mean baby powder really, the the
this, you know, the lowermessages and baby powder are
really kind of about racism andabout misogyny, right? Because
the for many people, they usetalcum powder, baby powder to
whiten their skin. You know, asyou know, in India, the biggest
(49:01):
selling cosmetics are skinwhiteners. And a a one of the
more basic ways of getting skinwhitening is to put talcum
powder on your skin. And so theysell it as a they sell it with
words like purity and the rest.
But what they're reallysignaling is you can be whiter
with this and and and one of thereasons that it's associated
with ovarian cancer so strongly,of course, is that there's a
(49:25):
very strong sense in the baby inbaby powder. In fact, it's
Johnson, and Johnson surveysshowed that is the most widely
recognized scent in the world,and women use it in their crotch
area to cover up vaginal smells,which they're embarrassed about.
And they're embarrassed about itbecause they're, you know, these
(49:45):
misogynistic messages thatthere's something wrong with
vaginal smells. So, you know,all of these products play into
some of the darkest strains of.
Of you know humanity.
Tara Khandelwal (50:02):
So for anyone who wants to write an expose or
dig into uncomfortable truth,obviously it's not easy, because
you are. It's sort of like Davidversus Goliath, you know, you're
one person against this hugesystem. What advice would you
give to people who want to writemore about these kind of things,
but are scared of theconsequences.
Gardiner Harris (50:24):
Try doing something else. Get counseling,
you know, don't, don't do it.
It's, it's, you know, it's hard.
It's, you fight, fighting. Thesystem almost never works, and
puts you in sort of tough youknow, I lived for five years
with these horrible storieshaunting me, and longer than
(50:46):
that, because, of course, youknow, it was really 20 years ago
that I started learning aboutthese stories and and having
them live inside of me. Youknow, there's something wrong
with me that that I can't reallylive without trying to get these
stories known and trying to getaccountability for the people
(51:09):
who have done such terriblethings. I think I, you know, I
grew up with daddy issues orsomething like that. You know,
I'm hoping that your listenersare healthier than I and can
sort of move on with otherthings. Because it's, I think
it's a really, I think it'sreally tough thing to do, and
(51:29):
it's, it's these sort of storiesare very hard to live with.
Tara Khandelwal (51:32):
I can't imagine, because sort of like
hearing them firsthand from allof these people, and just seeing
how pervasive you know this,this company is, and how
pervasive its tentacles are, andhow it reaches through
everything, policymakers,marketing, media, doctors, and
is still selling products thatare bad for you. It's really
(51:55):
heartbreaking. What youmentioned a next book. So I'm
just curious what, what is yournext book about?
Gardiner Harris (52:03):
I'm not going to talk about it, you know. It's
another troubled thing, and I'lljust, you know, I don't want to
warn you know the folks I'mlooking at yet until I have to
so but listen, Tara, I am sograteful for your interest and
so grateful that you read thebook so closely and that you
(52:25):
seem to like it so much. It's,you know, it's conversations
like this that really make mehappy that I did this effort,
and that, you know, the messageis getting out there, and I'm,
you know, so grateful that thereare people literally on the
other side of the world for me,who, who so appreciate the work.
Tara Khandelwal (52:48):
Oh, thank you so much for this conversation,
and for, you know, writing thisbook, because I think
definitely, you know, even if itreaches sort of a few people
here in India, maybe sort of, wecan be a little more careful
about kind of the products thatwe consume, and be a little more
cognizant, I think, in general,about, you know, looking at
(53:11):
labels and doing our ownresearch. Because there is this
whole market right now, whetherit's, you know, people selling
health food under wrong label,medicines, etc. I think we as
consumers now need to get a lotmore discerning, and I think
work like this will help usreally understand that. Yeah, we
also need to take it into ourhands and see what we are
(53:33):
putting into our bodies. Sothank you so much for this
conversation. It's been eyeopening and honestly a little
bit scary, but to my listeners,keep questioning, keep holding
people accountable, and nevertake safe at face value. And if
you're listening right now, dous a favor. Hit follow on
Spotify Apple podcast. You nevermiss an episode and tell us in
(53:54):
the comments, if you found abrand that you've trusted your
whole life and was actuallyhiding the truth, what would you
do? Thank you so much for cominghere and giving me your time. I
really, really appreciate theconversation.
Gardiner Harris (54:07):
Thank you, Tara, take care.
Tara Khandelwal (54:09):
Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books
and Beyond with bound. This
Michelle D'costa (54:13):
podcast is created by bound, a company that
helps you grow through story.
Find us at bound India on allsocial media platforms tune
Tara Khandelwal (54:22):
in every Wednesday as we peek into the
lives and minds of somebrilliant authors from India and
South Asia. You.
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