NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An explosive, deeply reported exposé of Johnson & Johnson, one of America’s oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies—from an award-winning investigative journalist
“A damning portrait.”—Associated Press
“A page-turning drama that raises life-or-death questions about the world’s largest healthcare conglomerate.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY AND NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
One day in 2004, Gardiner Harris, a pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times, was early for a flight and sat down at an airport bar. He struck up a conversation with the woman on the barstool next to him, who happened to be a drug sales rep for Johnson & Johnson. Her horrific story about unethical sales practices and the devastating impact they’d had on her family fundamentally changed the nature of how Harris would cover the company—and the entire pharmaceutical industry—for the Times. His subsequent investigations and ongoing research since that very first conversation led to this book—a blistering exposé of a trusted American institution and the largest healthcare conglomerate in the world.
Harris takes us light-years away from the company’s image as the child-friendly “baby company” as he uncovers reams of evidence showing decades of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions. He covers multiple disasters: lies and cover-ups regarding the link of Johnson’s Baby Powder to cancer, the surprising dangers of Tylenol, a criminal campaign to sell antipsychotics that have cost countless lives, a popular drug used to support cance
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