September 10, 2024 7 min to read

Johnson & Johnson’s Long History of Lawsuits

Category : DISCOVERY, SCIENCE

The European Union’s (EU) drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), has discovered a potential link between Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine and incidents of blood clots in an individual’s deep veins. The issue was highlighted in a Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) meeting.

1. Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine Linked to Blood Clotting Condition

In its meeting highlights, published on the EMA website, the agency states that PRAC has “concluded” there is a possible link between rare cases of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and the Janssen vaccine. VTE is a medical condition in which a blood clot forms in a deep vein, potentially traveling to the lungs. This can cause a blockage of blood supply that could threaten a person’s life. The deep vein clot is usually formed in the arms, leg, or groin.
The EMA decision comes as one of the EU’s member states, Slovenia, temporarily suspended the use of  the J&J vaccine on Sept. 29 following the death of a 20-year-old woman. The victim died of a stroke and had been administered a J&J vaccine two weeks earlier. The suspension will continue until experts are able to ascertain whether there was a link between the woman’s death and her vaccination.
Johnson & Johnson

 

“The patient had blood clots and bleeding in the brain at the same time, intensive care was not successful,” Igor Rigler, a neurologist at the Ljubljana hospital center. Around 120,000 people in Slovenia have been administered the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The government has placed an order for an additional 100,000 doses. Slovenia has seen large protests against the administration’s vaccination measures.

According to the CDC, look out for the following symptoms for three weeks after receiving the vaccine:

  • Severe or persistent headaches or blurred vision
  • Shortness of breath
  • Chest pain
  • Leg swelling
  • Persistent abdominal pain
  • Easy bruising or tiny blood spots under the skin beyond the injection site

With regard to the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated in May that the jab was responsible for 28 blood clots. A woman from Oregon reported developing blood clots in her brain, stomach, throat, and lungs after being inoculated, reported KGW8. In Michigan, a 35-year-old woman died after receiving the vaccine. The family stated that she had developed complications from the jab. According to the CDC, the J&J one-shot vaccine “was 66.3% effective in clinical trials (efficacy) at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 illness in people who had no evidence of prior infection.”

However, the CDC and FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database contains reports through May 28, 2021 with 377 deaths, 1,925 hospitalizations, 87 cases of anaphylaxis, 139 cases of Bell’s Palsy, 213 heart attacks, and 1,689 cases of blood clots and strokes after J&J vaccine administration.

 

 

2.Product Defects, Misleading Advertising, and Fatal Outcomes

Johnson & Johnson (J&J), a supplier of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines in the United States, has a history of serial criminal fraud. As with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the J&J vaccine has been granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but not FDA approval.

J&J, founded in 1886, has operations in 60 nations around the world and employs 135,000 people. In 2020, it generated revenues in excess of 82.6 billion dollars. However, the company has been involved in several lawsuits related to defective products, dishonest marketing, and other issues.

 

 

In 1995, J&J subsidiary Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation was fined 7.5 million dollars for shredding documents in an attempt to thwart a federal investigation. At the time, authorities were investigating whether the company had illegally marketed its Retin-A acne cream as a wrinkle remover. Ortho later confessed to instructing its employees to shred the documents.

J&J was forced to pay an undisclosed amount in 1996 for making false claims about the failure rate of its condoms. Then, in 2001, the company was fined 860 million dollars for misleading customers to throw away disposable contact lenses prematurely. The lawsuit, filed by multiple customers and later combined into a class action suit, alleged that the disposable lenses could be worn for up to two weeks despite J&J’s recommendation to use them only once.

In 2004, J&J fined 90 million dollars after patients claimed that the company’s Propulsid drug for heartburn was linked to heart problems. Almost 4,000 plaintiffs were included in the settlement, with an estimated 300 deaths from consuming the medicine. The product was pulled from the U.S. market in July 2000, and banned in India and the Philippines in 2011.

In 2010, two J&J subsidiaries, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical LLC, agreed to pay 81 million dollars in damages from the illegal promotion of epilepsy drug Topamax. The drug was approved by the FDA for treating partial-onset seizures, but Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical was caught promoting the drug for off-label psychiatric uses.

“Through a practice known as the ‘Doctor-for-a-Day’ program… Ortho-McNeil hired outside physicians to join sales representatives in their visits to the offices of health care providers and to speak at meetings and dinners about prescribing Topamax for unapproved uses and doses,” said a Department of Justice (DoJ) press release.

In 2013, J&J and its subsidiaries were fined over 2.2 billion dollars to resolve civil and criminal liabilities for the company’s promotion of Risperdal, Invega, and Natrecor for uses not approved by the FDA.

Risperdal was only approved for the treatment of schizophrenia, but the company promoted its use in treating psychotic symptoms and associated behavioral disturbances among elderly patients who were not suffering from schizophrenia. The DoJ called the resolution “one of the largest health care fraud settlements in U.S. history.”

 

 

Links to cancer

In 2016, the multinational corporation was asked to pay 417 million dollars to a woman who said that she had developed ovarian cancer due to using products like Johnson’s Baby Powder. Four years later, a Missouri appeals court ordered J&J to pay 2.1 billion dollars to several women alleging that prolonged use of the company’s baby powder, which contained asbestos, resulted in ovarian cancer. The court ruled that J&J’s conduct was “outrageous because of evil motive or reckless indifference.”

Then, in 2019, the company recalled tens of thousands of bottles of baby powder after the FDA found a sample containing trace amounts of asbestos. J&J revealed that it would be stopping the sale of talcum-based baby powder in the United States and Canada in May 2020, and settled over 1,000 talcum powder lawsuits for 100 million dollars in October 2020. As of February 2021, the company faced 27,168 talcum powder lawsuits, with victims complaining of ovarian cancer and mesotheliomas, a type of cancer occurring in the tissue layer covering internal organs. J&J continues to sell its baby powder in the UK, India, France, the Philippines, and other countries. The company’s anticoagulation medication Xarelto has generated 13,511 lawsuits, with reported injuries including wound leaks, blood clots, deadly bleeding events, and infections.

 

 

 

After the FDA alerted Johnson & Johnson in October, 2019 of the results showing asbestos in their container of baby powder, the healthcare giant reacted by issuing a voluntary recall of lot #22318RB which included 33,000 containers. Johnson & Johnson stated this was done “out of an abundance of caution”, and rightly so as the FDA has said, “there are no known safe levels of asbestos.” According to Reuters, some major U.S. retailers have followed a similar course of action and removed all 22-ounce containers from their shelves. Nevertheless, it did not take long for Johnson & Johnson to reconsider their situation and make another decision. On May 19, 2020, Johnson and Johnson decided to stop the sale of talc-based baby powder in the United States and Canada, a decision probably motivated by the thousands of lawsuits pending before a U.S. District Court in New Jersey claiming that talc caused their mesothelioma and ovarian cancer.

 

Source:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/slovenia-temporarily-suspends-jjs-janssen-covid-19-vaccine-2021-09-29/

https://www.phcx.org/blog/coronavirus/why-was-the-johnson-johnson-vaccine-paused/

https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/10/06/johnson-johnsons-vaccine-linked-to-blood-clotting-condition.html

https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/06/10/johnson-and-johnson-lawsuits-us.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/11/business/ortho-fined-7.5-million-in-retin-a-case.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/business/johnson-johnson-settles-lawsuits-over-contact-lenses.html

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/1996/01/ftc-gives-final-approval-consent-agreement-johnson-johnson

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-feb-06-fi-propulsid6-story.html

https://www.oppenheimlaw.com/johnson-and-johnson-talcum-powder-lawsuit/

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/johnson-johnson-vaccine-linked-28-cases-blood-clots-cdc-reports-n1267128

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/woman-reports-multiple-blood-clots-after-johnson-johnson-shot/283-7fb4ef05-ea38-486f-a3db-4b7ffe5780e8

https://www.fox17online.com/news/local-news/ionia/ionia-co-womans-death-after-getting-j-j-vaccine-reported-to-the-cdc

https://www.law.com/2020/06/23/appeals-court-lowers-4-7b-talc-verdict-to-2-1b-but-cites-jjs-evil-motive/?slreturn=20210509124429

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/johnson-johnson-baby-powder-us-canada

https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2020/10/14/johnson–johnsons-100-million-baby-powder-lawsuit-settlement-is-overdue-for-black–hispanic-women/

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