This was recommended to my book club as a book that you would speed through because you would be fueled by anger. An anger read is new to me but this is absolutely the correct term for it, because you CANNOT be anything but angry when the first chapter starts with abestos in baby powder and continues with how talc can cause ovarian cancer and how Johnson and Johnson persisted with these two items in their famous baby powder.
The first case of what went wrong with baby powder in No More Tears is bad enough, but the book manages to find even more cases of malpractice that make it hard to give Johnson and Johnson benefit of the doubt. Like yes, most of their products might not harm people, but when you have:
- Selling drugs for an off-label purpose that leads to increased deaths in patients
- Selling drugs for another off-label purpose that leads to breast tissue in boys where only a mastectomy can get rid of it
- Liver failure caused by Tylenol
- Contributing to the opioid crisis
- Birth control that didn’t work and was even dangerous to the users due to the high levels of hormones released
- Vaginal meshes that not only didn’t work but caused more pain to the patients who received them
And more! And it wasn’t even accidental, in many cases, reps were told how to skirt the law and the FDA basically comes across as powerless (if not in J&J’s pocket) in the whole book. Studies carried out on these products showed that they were not only ineffective, they were harmful and yet the response was to bury the studies and continue selling a harmful product. It feels like only lawsuits can get the company to stop/steer course, which makes me wonder how J&J kept its reputation for so many years.
One of the most upsetting cases was the story of Austin, who has severe autism. His mum, Benita, read through the prescribing label and called the hotline twice to ask about Risperdal’s side effects. So these were parents that read what was given and made a decision with the information they had, and as a result, Austin developed gynecomastia, which in boys, “is permanently disfiguring, since the tissue never goes away unless removed in a double mastectomy, a serious operation that can leave deep scars.” This was done to a little boy who doesn’t have the capacity to advocate for himself. As his mother said, “he knows… he just doesn’t have the capacity to ask me why” and honestly, that part made me cry.
After reading this, I kind of understand why there is such a big anti-pharma/crunchy movement going on in America. This is the kind of book that is going to shake your trust in the institutions in general because of all the harm done by this one company. If anything, this book should be a wakeup call for regulators to get their act together and actually act to protect consumers rather than being toothless and letting huge companies act how they please. Also, scientists and doctors need to be divorced from company payrolls because clearly the conflict of interests led to huge problems (but also thank you to those brave ones who stood up for the truth!).
No More Tears is a clarion call to end “business as usual” because business as usual is literally harming thousands of people. This is a meticulously researched book that made me so, so angry, but also made me realise that healthcare regulation is another thing that I should be examining each party’s stance for the next time an election rolls around.