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The Hindu
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
The Hindu On Books newsletter: Gardiner Harris on J&J's dangerous ways, Vajpayee's biography, Delhi in fiction and more
Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. The literary world has lost two writers, including a celebrated poet. Andrea Gibson, who used the pronoun they, explored gender identity, politics and a four-year battle with terminal ovarian cancer through verse. In Memoriam The 49-year-old starred in a documentary, 'Come See Me in the Good Light', with their wife Megan Falley which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival amid cheers and tears. In a poem Gibson wrote shortly before they died, titled 'Love Letter from the Afterlife,' they wrote: 'Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before.' Mystery writer Martin Cruz Smith, who wrote thrillers like Gorky Park and Hotel Ukraine, the 11th and latest in the series featuring the Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, has passed away at age 82. In its obituary, AP quoted from an interview Smith gave to 'Strand Magazine' in 2023: 'My longevity is linked to Arkady's. As long as he remains intelligent, humorous, and romantic, so shall I.' The fictional Arkady was given the same condition like the writer's – Parkinson's disease. Publisher Simon&Schuster penned a moving tribute saying, Smith's books are one of the great achievements in modern suspense writing. In reviews this week, we learn more about Gardiner Harris' takedown of one of America's most loved companies, Johnson&Johnson, and its dark and dangerous secrets, we read an excerpt from the second and last part of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's biography, and several books with Delhi at the centre and more. Books of the week The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson (Ebury Press) is a hard hitting expose on what went on at J&J, the pharma major. It uncovers the secrets across the company's drugs and products from baby powder, Tylenol, Risperdal (antipsychotic), EPO (a cancer drug), metal-on-metal hip implants, among others, which adversely impacted the health of users. Chillingly, the company continued to market them, fully cognisant of the harmful effects. In a conversation with Ramya Kannan, Harris, an investigative reporter, describes the Herculean task he took on, and what he was up against. Asked among all the violations, what he thought was the most egregious, he said: 'J&J, early on, would find out that its product was dangerous, and would hide those dangers not only from the public, but from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and other regulatory agencies, knowing that it could result in a number of deaths. I estimate that at least 2 million Americans alone died from using J&J products. So it really is hard to rank order. But the worst of the worst, just in terms of sheer numbers, would probably be Risperdal. Epidemiological analysis shows that it is probably one of the most deadly drugs that has ever been sold in the U.S. It is sold to children, even though it causes boys to grow breasts and young girls to express milk. And again, the company hid those risks, lied about them in publications.' The second volume of a two-part biography, Believer's Dilemma (Picador India) begins with a watershed moment when India voted in its first non-Congress government at the Centre in 1977. The Sangh Parivar was in the coalition, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee got the post of External Affairs Minister. Two years later, when the coalition collapsed, Vajpayee 'publicly apportioned some of the blame to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,' whose ideology he believed in. After a stint in government, 'the believer now had dilemmas,' writes Abhishek Chaudhary, and Vajpayee's relationship with the Sangh Parivar would 'remain a convoluted affair till the very end.' Read an excerpt. Is Delhi the 'Valhalla of hucksters, the nourishing nucleus of the confidence trick that is Indian democracy?' Ranbir Sidhu's new novel Night in Delhi (Context) is set in Delhi where almost everybody is out to scam somebody. The novel's unnamed protagonist is a minor crook and thief. As Aditya Mani Jha writes in his review, all the happenings are a window into the city's invisible gears and mechanisms, the covert economies that keep the whole thing together on a wing and a prayer. 'Sidhu's gaze is unflinching, shorn of sentiment, intent on grabbing the reader by the scruff of the neck, making them look at things they would have otherwise turned their gaze away from,' he points out. Spotlight Radhika Oberoi (Stillborn Season, Of Mothers and Other Perishables) writes an essay on Delhi in fiction, foregrounding old and new titles including Arundhati Roy's 2017 novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. She mentions a new anthology, Basti & Durbar: Delhi-New Delhi: A City in Stories (Speaking Tiger), edited by Rakhshanda Jalil, and says it is a soulful exposition of the many Delhis that exist, simultaneously, or piled upon the ruins of erstwhile Delhis. 'In the introduction, Jalil poses a few questions: 'Is the city central, or peripheral, to the writer's concerns? Can the 'spirit' of Delhi, the sum total of its disparate and disarming parts, ever really be captured in words?'' Delhi, says Oberoi, is a sensual city, a resilient city, a city of whores, eunuchs, and coiffed rummy players at the Gymkhana Club. 'And because it is unloved by those who live in its neighbourhoods and study at its universities, it becomes the stuff of literature.' Browser The New Geography of Innovation (HarperCollins) by Mehran Gul asks whether the geography of innovation is shifting from the U.S., the source of just about all the technologies that define modern life, from computers to social networks and electric cars. He looks to places like Taiwan (which has the world's most important semiconductor company, TSMC), and other places in Asia, Sweden (Spotify), Nordic countries (known for best-known games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds) and so forth. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Matt Richtel's new book, How We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence, is based on years of investigative reporting for the New York Times, and offers a look at the modern adolescent experience—from rising anxiety and early puberty to how the digital world collides with a still-developing brain. If you liked the television series 'Adolescence' on Netflix which held a mirror to youth and society, this book is revelatory. Amrita Mahale's new novel, Real Life (Hamish Hamilton), is a mystery set around the disappearance of wildlife biologist Tara from the Mahamaya Valley in the Himalayas. As Tara's best friend Mansi tries to find out what happened, she is drawn into the mysteries of the Valley, the clash between technology and nature, and where a woman's voice can be silenced in many ways. Rudraneil Sengupta's The Beast Within (Context) is an effective police procedural, a rare breed in the country's bookscape. The reviewer, Sumana Mukherjee, writes that Sengupta delves into the many layers that comprise policing in India. His weary and damaged Inspector Prashant Kumar is a credible protagonist who works the many planes of the National Capital Region's realities without either diminishing inequities or ignoring power structures.
The Hindu
17-07-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
Interview with Gardiner Harris, author of The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
It's difficult to read Gardiner Harris' book at a stretch, only, and only because there are portions where you have to set it down and take a breather, and sigh. It is because the events of the book haunt you, turn you inside out and sometimes have you bristling with anger, the pages shaking in your hand. The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, sometimes, is a drop down a rabbit hole on the dark side of the moon. The book is a hard hitting expose on what went on at J&J, the pharma major, and it uncovers the secrets across the company's repertoire of drugs and products from baby powder, Tylenol, Risperdal (antipsychotic), EPO (a cancer drug), metal-on-metal hip implants, among others, all adversely impacting the health of users. Chillingly, the company continued to market them, fully cognisant of the harmful effects. In a conversation, Harris, an investigative reporter himself, describes the Herculean task he took on, and what he was up against. In conversation with Gardiner Harris Among all the violations that you have chronicled, what did you think was the most egregious? J&J, early on, would find out that its product was dangerous, and would hide those dangers not only from the public, but from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and other regulatory agencies, knowing that it could result in a number of deaths. I estimate that at least 2 million Americans alone died from using J&J products. So it really is hard to rank order. But the worst of the worst, just in terms of sheer numbers, would probably be Risperdal. Epidemiological analysis shows that it is probably one of the most deadly drugs that has ever been sold in the U.S. It is sold to children, even though it causes boys to grow breasts and young girls to express milk. And again, the company hid those risks, lied about them in publications. You have written about how you grew up in a J&J town. How did you move on from that to investigating the company? I spent part of my growing up years in Princeton, New Jersey, right next to New Brunswick, where J&J is headquartered. There was a sense, growing up, that it was really a capitalistic ideal -- this was a company that both did well financially and did good in in society, and that it was seen as a sort of mom, apple pie and America all rolled into one. So when I first got the pharmaceutical beat, when I worked for The Wall Street Journal, I expected to have a wonderful time covering J&J. But my interactions with them were just the opposite and it surprised me that they were the least open with reporters, the most secretive. When the AIDS crisis in Africa hit at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the scandal around the pricing of drugs led many U.S. pharma companies to agree to allow generics companies to sell drugs in Africa. J&J was the only major manufacturer of AIDS drugs that refused to allow that. I couldn't believe it. I thought there must be some mistake, but in story after story, the image of this company ended up being entirely the opposite of what we had believed so long. It probably hit me hardest when my own first son was born. He was born early and ended up spending days in the NICU. Soon after, I got a whole bunch of documents on J&J's heartburn drug Propulsid. Even though the company had done 20 clinical trials in children and infants, each one of which had failed to show that there was a benefit; the company nonetheless underwrote a marketing programme to sell them to infants. Not only did this drug not help these children, but it caused a QT prolongation, which is a heart arrhythmia, and for newborns, and particularly for preemies, a heart arrhythmia can be fatal. What was J&J's response to the book? I did cover the company for many years, I knew a lot of the executives and I certainly knew how to reach out to the company. As soon as I got the contract for this book, I told them that I'm writing this book and I would love for them to participate in it. But J&J had the same reaction it had had throughout my career -- which is to stonewall, not talk to me, not participate, and hope the story goes away. Did you, at some time, feel a bit like Erin Brockovich? I never looked that good; it's tough competing with Julia Roberts! But what was difficult about this process was just how dark it was, and how depressing the work often was. I spent more than five years writing this book and I go to church quite regularly. I found that I really needed that outlet throughout this process, even more than normal because I found I needed to appeal to God to help me through this, because you can lose hope. For me, it's just a very dark tale and I am thrilled, and surprised, actually, that it's gotten as many readers as it has. Do you think that the FDA, as a regulatory agency, could have done better? The portrait I paint of the FDA is one of real feckless disregard for protecting the public. Unfortunately, the FDA is largely funded by drug makers by what are known as user fees. The result of that is that the FDA has become captive to the very industry that it regulates. When I talk about baby powder, for instance, people had petitioned the FDA repeatedly to mandate a cancer warning on all products with talcum powder, and this would have included Johnson's baby powder. The FDA refused to answer those petitions until finally J&J lost its first baby powder case, and then suddenly, the FDA had to answer these petitions; it did so in the negative and claimed that the baby powder was fine. In the U.S., it was the drug kingpin when it came to opioids and the FDA got a lot of criticism of its oversight of opioids. To deal with that criticism, the agency actually hired a former FDA commissioner who served on the board of directors for J&J for the previous dozen years. So, to advise the agency on how to deal with this crisis that was created by J&J, it hired a top J&J person! How did you decide on your chosen style for the book, an engaging, but investigative journalistic piece? I have to say, you know, as I said, the book was nearly twice as long and I ended up hiring an editor to help me not only on the decisions about which products to include in the end, but also about the style. The original version of the book had had more personal stuff and my years as a reporter covering the company. But my editors thought the reader needed a really neutral voice in telling this story. The only way that it can work is to be told in a very low-key, neutral way. In your view, was there was a turning point when J&J could have reversed things? I really think it was that period in the early 1980s and perhaps the late 1970s. It was Johnson's baby powder in particular, that provided the ladder down which the company itself descended into real darkness. The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson Gardiner Harris Ebury Press ₹899
Wall Street Journal
15-05-2025
- Health
- Wall Street Journal
‘Unshrunk' Review: The Toll of the Treatment
For nearly 15 years, Laura Delano was, in her own words, a 'professional psychiatric patient.' She believed she had an incurable psychiatric disease that could be managed only with medication, therapy and the occasional hospitalization. Over the course of her long career as a patient, Ms. Delano was medicated with Seroquel, Geodon, Abilify, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Depakote, Topamax, Lamictal, Klonopin, Ativan, Ambien, Provigil, Prozac, Effexor, Celexa, Cymbalta, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, and lithium. So convinced of her condition was Ms. Delano that if anyone had handed her a memoir like the one she has now written, 'Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance,' she would have been insulted and outraged. Her story begins when she was 13 years old. A competitive squash player and the soon-to-be president of her eighth-grade class, Ms. Delano was brushing her teeth in front of a mirror one evening when she had a harrowing experience: The edges of her vision blurred; she felt a terrifying sense of disembodiment and fragmentation; and the figure in the mirror was no longer recognizable as her. The episode didn't last very long, but it left her with a profound sense of unease. Reflecting on it in bed later that night, Ms. Delano began to see herself from the outside. The view was unsettling. Convinced that her life was all fakery and mindless rule-following, she resolved to escape. What followed was a self-destructive spiral that went far beyond adolescent rebellion. Ms. Delano gives us an unsparing account of her alcoholism, cocaine abuse, eating disorders and episodes of self-harm. In the ninth grade, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given prescriptions for an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer. Later came an antipsychotic and a drug to help her sleep. If anything, medication accelerated her decline. By age 19, when she was a sophomore at Harvard, she writes, 'I'd morphed from a raw, suffering, lost young woman . . . into a detached, absorbed, empathyless machine.' Ms. Delano marks her eventual turnaround at age 27 to a moment of profound revelation in a Vermont bookstore. That was where she encountered Robert Whitaker's 2010 book, 'Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.' The question Mr. Whitaker asked was simple: How is it possible that rates of mental illness have skyrocketed in parallel with the development of so many supposedly groundbreaking psychiatric drugs? Mr. Whitaker's book forced Ms. Delano to pose a question that had never before occurred to her. 'What if it wasn't treatment-resistant mental illness that had been sending me ever deeper into the depths of despair and dysfunction, but the treatment itself?'
Malaysian Reserve
24-04-2025
- Health
- Malaysian Reserve
J&J and Eli Lilly Concealed Breast Cancer Risks in Blockbuster Antipsychotics for Decades, Wisner Baum Lawsuit Alleges
ALAMEDA, Calif., April 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — A lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court alleges pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly knowingly concealed evidence that their blockbuster antipsychotic medications Risperdal (risperidone) and Zyprexa (olanzapine) cause breast cancer. Attorneys from Wisner Baum filed the complaint on behalf of plaintiff Bridgett Brown, who was prescribed both brand-name and generic versions of Risperdal and Zyprexa. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in approximately 2024. This is the first lawsuit to allege that these antipsychotic drugs cause breast cancer. The complaint centers on the drugs' capacity to cause hyperprolactinemia—a hormonal imbalance directly tied to breast cancer development. Recent studies cited in the lawsuit show significant increased breast cancer risks: 62% increased breast cancer risk for high-prolactin drugs like Risperdal and 54% increased risk for medium-prolactin drugs like Zyprexa – A study of 540,737 women (Rahman, 2023) 59% increased breast cancer risk for Risperdal – A review of 15 studies conducted on over 1 million individuals (Bird, 2025) 47% increased breast cancer risk after 5+ years of exposure to prolactin-increasing antipsychotics like Risperdal and Zyprexa – A Swedish registry study of 132,061 women (Solmi, 2024) Atypical antipsychotic drugs were initially approved for treating severe schizophrenia. However, the lawsuit alleges the drug manufacturers broadened their customer bases by gaining approval for milder indications and promoting off-label use, including ADD in children and dementia in the elderly, generating billions in profits. 'These companies transformed narrow-use schizophrenia drugs into multi-billion-dollar per year blockbusters by targeting extremely vulnerable segments of our population, all while hiding a cancer risk they've known about for decades,' said Pedram Esfandiary, attorney for Ms. Brown. The lawsuit alleges that despite knowledge dating back to the 1990s connecting these drugs to hyperprolactinemia, drug labels denied any cancer risk, stating until 2025, 'neither clinical trials nor epidemiological studies conducted to date have shown an association between chronic administration of this class of drugs and tumorigenesis in humans.' 'The science has been clear on prolactin-elevating antipsychotics for decades,' said Monique Alarcon, attorney for Ms. Brown. 'These companies had a duty to inform; they failed, and now individuals nationwide are suffering the consequences. We intend to hold them accountable.' The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, alleging strict liability for failure to warn, negligence, and fraud. The case is Brown v. Johnson & Johnson et al (Case No. 25CV119808). Read the complaint here. The award-winning law firm of Wisner Baum has successfully litigated cases against many of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Since 1985, the firm has earned a reputation for breaking new legal ground, holding corporations accountable, influencing public policy, and raising public awareness on important safety issues. Using its longstanding tradition of success in the courtroom, the firm always strives to expose unsafe products or harmful practices to protect consumers from dangerous products. The firm has won over $4 billion in settlements and verdicts across all practice areas. MEDIA CONTACTSteve Crighton, steve@
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How Johnson & Johnson has somehow survived scandal after scandal
On Sept. 29, 1982, Mary Kellerman woke up feeling sick. The 12-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, a suburb of Chicago, asked her parents to stay home from school, and they gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule. She was dead a few hours later. The doctors assumed she'd died from a congenital heart condition or perhaps an aneurysm. But then six more people across the Chicagoland area, ranging in age from 19 to 35, also died the same day from mysterious circumstances. Before long, firefighters realized that all the deaths had one thing in common: Tylenol. After the bottles were scrutinized by a medical examiner, it was discovered they'd been laced with cyanide. The deaths became 'one of the most extensively covered news events since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy almost twenty years earlier,' writes Gardiner Harris in his new book, 'No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson' (Random House), out now. 'All three national networks made the poisonings the center of their broadcasts for weeks. Almost every newspaper in the country covered it through the fall, with more than one hundred thousand individual stories.' It was a scary time for consumers nationwide. But it was especially daunting for executives at Johnson & Johnson, one of the country's most beloved brands. 'Few American corporations have ever faced such a disaster,' writes Harris. Tylenol wasn't just a top seller for Johnson & Johnson; it was the company's most important and iconic product. 'Sales in 1982 were expected to approach $500 million and account for nearly 20% of its profits,' writes Harris. 'Now every major media organization on the planet was linking Tylenol with death. The company had to rescue the franchise, but how?' It didn't help that Chicago's own mayor, Jane Byrne, held a news conference imploring city residents to bring their Tylenol to the nearest police station. 'Don't take Tylenol,' she said, 'not even in tablet or liquid form.' It was, to say the least, the worst public relations moment imaginable. Johnson & Johnson was at a crossroads. Depending on how executives responded, it could either scare their loyal customers away forever or prove they were a company and a brand to be trusted. In the end, they managed to pull off the latter. Their response 'has long been seen as the most ethical, honest, and effective crisis reaction in American corporate history,' writes Harris. Johnson & Johnson has faced a lot of scandals over the years that could have (and in many cases, should have) destroyed them. From lawsuits claiming their antipsychotic drug Risperdal didn't warn about side effects like male breast growth, to a 2020 nationwide recall of their baby powder after evidence surfaced that it was contaminated with cancer-causing asbestos, to FDA restrictions of their COVID vaccine due to life-threatening blood clot risks. But it was the Tylenol scandal that would forever define the company. Before the poisonings, 'few people knew that Tylenol was made by Johnson & Johnson,' writes Harris. But after their response, polls found 'near universal recognition.' Last January, Fortune magazine ranked Johnson & Johnson as one of the most admired corporations in the world for the 23rd consecutive year. 'If there is a more American — quintessentially American — company than Johnson & Johnson, I do not know what it is,' Tyler Mathisen, a longtime CNBC anchor, told a network healthcare conference in May 2019. How did Johnson & Johnson not just survive but thrive after the Tylenol panic of 1982? First and foremost, they acted fast. J&J executives agreed to pull every Tylenol capsule on every store shelf—about 31 million bottles. 'It was the largest drug recall in history and cost J&J $100 million to manage,' writes Harris. They also quickly added protective seals to all new Tylenol products, with a plastic ring around the necks of pill bottles and a foil placed over the bottle's mouth. 'These measures were soon adopted by every over-the-counter drug manufacturer,' writes Harris. But while it appeared that the company was decisive and expeditious, they were actually well-prepared for this moment. 'In the previous three years, the company had received 300 complaints about contaminations,' writes Harris. Johnson & Johnson was already working on tamper-resistant packaging, so when the Tylenol poisonings happened. They also had something else that helped the company protect its public image: the most corrupt FDA commissioner in history. Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., who served as the FDA commissioner between 1981 and 1983, 'believed drug regulation should be a collaborative process,' writes Harris. His idea of collaboration involved bribes from drug companies. The Tylenol poisonings allowed him an opportunity to prove his loyalty to the medical drug behemoth. Hayes 'lost little time in publicly exonerating Johnson & Johnson,' writes Harris. 'FDA officials even took pains to tell reporters that the two lots linked to the poisonings were not being termed 'recalls,' which would imply a manufacturing defect.' There's no conclusive proof that J&J ever paid Hayes a dime during his time as FDA commissioner, 'but he spent much of the rest of his life (after retiring as commissioner) working for a public relations firm owned by a former top J&J executive,' writes Harris. When Johnson & Johnson relaunched Tylenol just a few months later, on Thanksgiving 1982, with tamper-resistant packaging, it was briefly the only over-the-counter medicine with the extra layer of safety, 'providing the product with a halo it never surrendered,' writes Harris. It wouldn't be the last time Tylenol became a headache (no pun intended) for the company. In 1994, Antonio Benedi, a former scheduler for President George H.W. Bush, sued Johnson & Johnson, claiming that he suffered liver failure after using Tylenol Extra Strength to treat the flu. The jury awarded him nearly $9 million in damages, and court documents found that 'Johnson & Johnson had known for years that moderate drinkers — a description that applies to most Americans — could suffer catastrophic liver damage from ordinary doses of Tylenol,' writes Harris. The trouble had started decades earlier, when J&J upped the amount of acetaminophen from 325 to 500 milligrams per pill to combat consumer belief that Tylenol, while safe, was less effective than other brands. The FDA was reluctant to add a liver warning on bottles, deeming it unnecessary. 'The agency said it didn't want people who were contemplating suicide to know the damage the drug could do,' Harris writes. The brand's avowed safety — its most iconic advertisement claimed it was the pain reliever 'hospitals use most' — was, ironically, what made it so deadly. A University of Pennsylvania study found that many patients who developed liver damage from Tylenol never bothered to read the recommended dosage as 'they thought the drug was so safe,' Harris writes. Despite the legal wrist slap, Johnson & Johnson emerged almost unscathed and today is still one of the largest and most trusted healthcare companies in the world. The 1982 Tylenol poisoning has become a case study for students at Harvard Business School, which 'used to teach thousands of executives-in-training that if they do the right thing even at considerable expense, customers will reward them,' Harris writes. Even within the J&J inner ranks, a belief has solidified that 'the company was a uniquely beneficial force for good in the world.' They had a level of trust from consumers that was 'all but impossible to degrade,' Harris writes. It was, he adds, 'Corporate gaslighting on an epic scale.'
