J&J Sued For Trying To Avoid Recall By Sending People To Buy Up Defective Motrin

from the health-and-safety dept

Wed, Jan 19th 2011 8:15am — Mike Masnick

Consumerist points us to the rather stunning story of how pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson tried to avoid doing an actual recall on defective Motrin it discovered by, instead, hiring people to go around the country buying up the pills. For those who already bought them? Too bad. The company did eventually do a full recall and has admitted that it probably should have told regulators that it was secretly buying up all the medicine. One of the people hired to buy up the product realized that something underhanded was going on and alerted officials. The instruction sheet he had been given stated:

"You should simply 'act' like a regular customer when making these purchases. THERE MUST BE NO MENTION OF THIS BEING A RECALL OF THIS PRODUCT!"

When the guy was questioned as to why he was buying such a large amount of Motrin he just brushed aside the questions. Separately, J&J emails reveal that execs congratulated each other on a "great job" and a "major win" for originally avoiding having to do a full recall. Feeling safer?

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Filed Under: recall, secrets
Companies: johnson & johnson

26 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:21am

J&J has a long reputation of doing these secretive recalls. They're still one of the better 'pharmaceutical' corporations out there in terms of ethics though.
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- Dark Helmet (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:24am
  
  Re:
  "They're still one of the better 'pharmaceutical' corporations out there in terms of ethics though."
  
  That's like being the best athlete in your rec league. Relatively speaking, you're still horrible....
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  - Michael, 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:56am
    
    Re: Re:
    Or being the best pizza place outside of Chicago.
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    - Qritiqal (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:58am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Or being the best IP lawyer
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      - Michael, 19 Jan 2011 @ 9:01am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        best, or most honest?
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        ltlw0lf (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 4:45pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        best, or most honest?
        
        Is there a difference?
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    - Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 10:37am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Or being the best pizza place outside of New York City.
      
      FTFY
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      - Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 11:18am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Or believing your bubble of a city is the best example of a product anywhere.
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        Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2011 @ 6:03am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        I don't believe anything. I just like being inflammatory.
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- Matthew (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:25am
  
  Re:
  Assuming we take this comment at face value and even accept it as true, doesn't this just paint an even worse picture of the industry as a whole?
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- Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:25am
  
  Re:
  (though lately I'm starting to question their ethics a bit more. They've been having some pretty bad quality control issues lately that seem to have to do with cutting costs. Lets hope this doesn't get worse).
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- Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 6:11pm
  
  Re:
  (Oh, now I remember what they're called. They're called soft recalls).
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:30am

Anyone else reminded of The Third Man?
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johnjac (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 8:40am

Tylenol Scare
How the mighty have fallen. Johnson & Johnson handling of the 1982 Tylenol Scare has been long praised and exemplified as how to handle a crisis.

I guess that was a fluke.
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N2iT (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 9:16am

What was wrong with pills were they going to kill people
I think that if the problem with the pills was enough to seriously hurt someone then what they did was absolutely wrong and some should go to jail but I can't see the company making such a bad choice under those circumstances
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DH's Love Child (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 9:19am

Or being the best lawyer

There, FTFY
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Chris Rhodes (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 9:48am

For Anyone Who Doesn't Want to Read the Link
Congressional records and Kroger's complaint say the trouble started at a manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico. The company learned in November 2008 that a batch of Motrin tablets didn't dissolve as fast as expected, impairing how much ibuprofen a consumer would get.

So the problem was that the pills were not as effective as they should have been.
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- weneedhelp (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 10:05am
  
  Re: For Anyone Who Doesn't Want to Read the Link
  "So the problem was that the pills were not as effective as they should have been."
  Make you feel better that they were selling pills that didn't work?
  Still, regardless of the effects, or lack thereof, the issue was they were covering up a defect.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 11:22am
    
    Re: Re: For Anyone Who Doesn't Want to Read the Link
    They were covering it up by eating an expense, that would never have harmed anyone. While bad, not as bad as the complete lack of disclosure of 100+ companies (minus Google, partially) after breaches occurred one year ago upon their Information Systems. (We still don't know what these 100 companies that China/etc may have root on.)
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Chris Rhodes (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 2:01pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: For Anyone Who Doesn't Want to Read the Link
      that would never have harmed anyone.
      
      I wouldn't go that far. I don't feel I'm qualified to make that kind of medical determination.
      
      Sure, you and I may just take aspirin (as an example) for minor aches and pains, but there might be people out there taking it as a blood thinner, where ineffectiveness on its part could have deadly results.
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  - Chris Rhodes (profile), 19 Jan 2011 @ 1:57pm
    
    Re: Re: For Anyone Who Doesn't Want to Read the Link
    I wasn't being an industry apologist. Just stating a fact. =)
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Valkor, 19 Jan 2011 @ 10:23am

Ethics and perception
On the one hand, this batch of ineffective pills seems to have only gone into little 8-packs. I doubt any one relying on Motrin for a serious medical reason would be buying that *few*. On the other hand, JJ kept shipping the things for FOUR MONTHS and didn't do their little "secret shopper" trick for three months after that. On the gripping hand, if JJ doesn't mind selling 800 packages of placebo in Oregon, should I trust ANYTHING they sell? It looks like their desire to avoid a recall on even a small number of meds is very high, and their value placed on customer service very low.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 11:39am

"They're still one of the better 'pharmaceutical' corporations out there in terms of ethics though."

That's like being the best athlete in your rec league. Relatively speaking, you're still horrible....

Relatively speaking, wouldn't you be the best? Absolutely speaking, you'd be horrible.
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Seth, 19 Jan 2011 @ 12:57pm

The Oregonian?
The Oregonian broke this story? I didn't know they still had any staff working there. I can't even remember the last "news" story I read that was not simply from one of the wire services.
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 19 Jan 2011 @ 2:17pm

They�re Banned From Using The Ban To Promote The Work, But ...
... are they banned from using the ban on using the ban to promote the work, to promote the work?
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2011 @ 6:29pm

J&J is a pharmaceutical company? Really? What drug have they invented (by themselves) and brought to market in the last 10 years?

Seems like a holding company or a venture capital firm to me.
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