Harris takes on the entire pharmaceutical industry and lays bare the ruthless soul of America’s beloved baby company. In this revelatory exposé, decades of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices are carefully unravelled. Johnson & Johnson was marketed as safe, trusted and life-changing. But behind the glossy ads lurked a far more sinister truth: a ‘benign’ product that proved deadly, a new wonder drug that concealed devastating side effects, and implants that quietly broke down inside the very bodies they were meant to heal. For twenty-two straight years, this corporation was celebrated as one of Fortune’s most admired companies. But behind the accolades was a chilling question: how did one of the world’s most respected names in healthcare orchestrate a cover-up so vast, it left a trail of broken bodies and betrayed trust across the globe?
From Ice Cream Parties to Public Reckoning
Tracing the arc of Johnson & Johnson’s evolution, from a household name synonymous with baby care to a multibillion-dollar behemoth facing lawsuits and investigations, Harris exposes the gap between public image and private reality. With shocking detail, he examines how talcum powder warnings were buried, how psychiatric drugs like Risperdal were aggressively pushed on children through ice cream parties at psychiatrist offices, and how opioid sales were expanded through strategies rivaling those of Purdue Pharma.
“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
A Rotten Core: A Healthcare Industry Built to Betray
Harris’ investigatory work has echoes not just on Johnson & Johnson, but on the entire American Pharmaceutical industry. It points out the larger web of regulators and regulated, marketers and researchers— interlocking and interdependent in dangerous ways, susceptible to imperatives that do not put our safety first. He provides a valuable history and helps for a broader understanding of the future of the healthcare system.
About The Author
Gardiner Harris previously served as the public health and pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times and is now a freelance investigative journalist. He also served as a White House, South Asia, and international diplomacy reporter for the Times. He won the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative journalism and the George Polk Award for environmental reporting after revealing that coal companies deliberately and illegally exposed miners to toxic levels of coal dust. Harris’s novel, Hazard, draws on his experience investigating these conditions. He has also been a Pulitzer Prize finalist with a team of others at the Times. He lives in San Diego, California.
