8.20 Gardiner Harris: On The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson

What dangerous secrets lie beneath the "comforting newborn smell" of one of the most trusted companies in the world?

In this explosive episode, Pulitzer Prize-nominated NYT journalist Gardiner Harris pulls back the curtain on Johnson & Johnson's history, detailed in his book No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson.

Gardiner reveals J&J's systemic deception, from knowingly selling asbestos-contaminated baby powder for seven decades to marketing drugs as cancer cures that were actually "Miracle Grow" for tumours. He exposes J&J's hidden role in the opioid crisis and their shocking refusal to share life-saving HIV drugs with Africa, costing millions of lives.

Drawing from years of investigative reporting, Gardiner explains how corporate PR, media influence, and medical incentives allow giants like J&J to evade accountability, even with secret Grand Jury testimony as evidence. Tara and Gardiner also discuss the stories that didn't make it into the book and the mental toll of exposing the truth.

Tune in for an essential, eye-opening conversation that forces consumers to question the products of a company they love and trust.

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Transcript

Tara Khandelwal: 0:50

Hi everyone. If you're new here, this is the perfect episode to start with, but before we dive in, don't forget to follow and rate us on Spotify, on Apple podcast. So let's talk about Johnson and Johnson. For many of us, the name means baby powder, band aids and that comforting newborn spell. It's tied to our childhood, to care, to safety, right? But behind this wholesome image is a company that has hidden the truth, lied to customers and endangered millions and millions of lives. I didn't know this, and today we're speaking to Pulitzer Prize nominated NYT journalist Gardner Harris, he spent years uncovering the story and written about it in his new book. It's a deep dive into Johnson and Johnson's century long history, from its inspiring beginnings to all of these shocking scandals that have dropped the company. And what I really liked about this book is not just this jaw dropping revelations and this expose, but also how it's written, because it's very grip. It's not only very gripping, but it's empathetic and it's human. So Gardner, I'm so excited to have you here today. Welcome to Books and Beyond.

Gardiner Harris: 2:02

I'm so glad to be here. I'm honored. Thank you.

Tara Khandelwal: 2:06

So you know, let's start with just the opening of the book, because that is so hard hitting. You are at the airport, and you meet this sales rep from Johnson and Johnson, and she is completely disillusioned because she has worked with a doctor who has prescribed her own nephew the drug that she is selling, which is used to treat young adults who have mental health issues like schizophrenia, and she knows that her nephew didn't need this drug, but her sister and her relatives have have insisted that he have this drug, and the side effects have been so so bad. He's put on a lot of weight. He's become a listless young boy, and she has seen the negative effects of her work and her marketing efforts now in real time. And I think that scene was just so gut wrenching. And I can just imagine sort of you in that airport, hearing that story, and then, you know, maybe wanting to uncover more of this, because you also, as a coincidence, grew up in the town where Johnson, Johnson had a lot of its headquarters and factories. So can you tell me about a sort of how the story then led to your decision to research on this book, and how and why? Why did you decide to uncover the story in the first place.

Gardiner Harris: 3:29

Well, again, thanks for having me. I mean, you know, Tara, I think one of the interesting things is journalists get known for the stories that they do, but we all have a million stories that we know are incredible, that we get part of the story, but we don't get enough. And that was one of those stories. That was one of those, you know, the fish that got away. It was a great story. This woman told me, but she wouldn't give me permission to use her name. I really couldn't do the story without a name attached to it, and there just wasn't enough there. So it was a failure that haunted me for a very long time. Now, I will tell you that because of what she told me, I ended up spending years trying to find a way to talk about the use of antipsychotics in children, and ended up doing a series of stories on the issue in the New York Times, not using her, of course, or her story, but being inspired by her story. And those stories ended up leading to legislative changes in the United States and all the rest that I didn't really actually talk about in the book, because I didn't want to make myself a character in the book. But it was, it was that moment with her was one of the most important moments in my life. It led not only to a series of stories in the New York Times that led to legislative changing United States, but it really planted the seed. It was one of the most important precursors to this book. There were others just the year before my son was born. And unfortunately, I don't know if you're a parent, but my first son spent three or four days in the NICU unit, you know, the neonatal intensive care. He his life was, you know, hanging by a thread, as often happens. He was born a little bit early. Couldn't nurse. So we had this, my wife and I had this heartbreaking. A moment in our lives when we weren't sure whether our son would survive. He did. He came home huge relief. And this was back in the day when there wasn't anything such as paternity leave, which is still true in much of India. And so I went right back to work after my son was born, and I, in just the following days, got a huge tranche of documents from a source showing that Johnson and Johnson had spent years selling a heartburn drug as if it was really good for preemie infants. In fact, the company knew that the heartburn drug didn't help preemie infants, there was, there was no benefit to them, and in fact, had this side effects that that occasionally killed them. But they were so successful at selling this drug called propulsive that 1/5 of all preemies in the United States in the in the late 1990s were prescribed this drug, and I'm reading these documents where inside Johnson and Johnson, they know exactly what they're doing, which is they are they are harming babies, and dead babies start piling up and piling up and piling up. And the company inside has this debate, wait, all these babies are dying, we're not helping anyone. Why are we doing this? And their bosses are responding, we're doing this because it makes us a lot of money. And I'm reading this, my son has just been in the NICU, and I and I honestly cannot believe that American executives are willingly allowing and, in fact, acting in a way that will kill these babies for money. And I just, I just couldn't believe it. And I'll tell you one other thing that really sort of stuck with me, that led to the book, and this is something that where India plays a really important role. You'll remember Tara that in the late 1990s ARVs, these antiretroviral drugs, come out, and they end up saving the lives of HIV patients up until that point, up until, really, 1996 when the cocktail of ARVs came. You know, AIDS was a death sentence. And then in 96 really, in 97 these cocktails of medicines come out, and they're saving HIV patients lives, and making HIV really a chronic illness instead of a death sentence. But these drugs are so expensive, they cost roughly$20,000 a year, and you have to take them for the rest of your life that that you know nobody really outside of these well, very wealthy countries can afford them, as you will remember, this was the time when HIV infections were sweeping across Africa, and Africa was facing essentially a death sentence. There were predictions that half of the African population would die in the next, you know, 10 years or so, and so there was this huge controversy where the companies were bludgeoned by advocates, you have to make these drugs available to Indian generic companies to copy and allow them to sell and distribute in Africa. And the pharmaceutical industry essentially buckled, and a program was set up at the United Nations called UN AIDS to collect the patents of these drugs, give them to people like my friend, Yusuf Hamid at Cipla to copy and then distribute in Africa. And once the price of the generics got below $1 a day, they knew that they had the money to save essentially the continent. So all the companies gave up their patents. The Indian companies copied the pills and and, and, you know, more than 20 million lives have been saved. The one exception to this story was Johnson and Johnson. Johnson and Johnson was one of three or four companies that were major manufacturers of AIDS drugs and Johnson, and Johnson simply refused to provide its drugs and its drug patents to this program. And so this happy, good news story about the pharmaceutical industry doing the right thing had this one little asterisk that was kind of unbelievable to me, because I grew up, as I told you, in this town, right near Johnson and Johnson's headquarters. I grew up amongst kids whose parents worked there. Everybody really believed in this company as this incredibly ethical company, and yet they weren't playing ball in the same. Living of the African continent. Like, how is this possible? So I had the HIV thing, I had my own son, and then I meet this woman, and it was enough for me to sort of be like, Okay, this company not only is not the ethical Paragon that I thought it was, but is, in fact, exactly the opposite. You know, I covered the entire pharmaceutical company industry, and it's gotten, for good reason, a bad reputation for doing some bad things. There were some 300 or so guilty pleas, more than $20 billion in fines. But there are actually some good companies in the industry. There are some bad companies. There are some good companies. And I realized that Johnson and Johnson had this strange thing where, on the one hand it was it had the best reputation. It was beloved. It routinely tops all these surveys of being the most admired corporation in the world, but on the other hand, was the worst of the worst in how it actually behaved.

Tara Khandelwal: 11:55

Those stories are just very chilling. And you know, when I was reading your book, I was just thinking about how capitalism has completely distorted the industry, and I don't think that's something that we really speak about in India, just because I don't think there's enough data on this. I don't think there's enough research happening. So I see a lot of movies, a lot of TV shows, a lot of news about the American Pharmaceutical companies. You know, you also, you mentioned this in your book, and I've seen it on television, that in the movies, how these sales reps bribe these doctors to wrongfully prescribe medicine, and it's almost standard practice. And I'm just thinking, here we go to doctors to help us, and then those are the same people that are actually giving us something that's so bad for us, like, how do you even know what's right and what to consume in a world like this?

Gardiner Harris: 12:46

I think it's really difficult. And that's you know, one of the most important reasons that I wrote this book is to give people tools to understand really the healthcare system, the dynamics, the incentives, why you really should be skeptical of your doctor, even this person that you think is so well educated, someone you should trust. You know, in the United States, the pharmaceutical industry gives roughly $3 billion directly to doctors, for those doctors to serve as part time drug sales reps. So at you know, on the one hand, they're supposed to be these learned intermediaries for you, which is they know more information than you, and they're supposed to be completely agnostic about what drugs you take, because they're not supposed to have a financial incentive in their decision making. That's the definition of a learned intermediary. But by taking the money and and and listening to these pitches, they are neither learned because they their, their their own understanding gets distorted, nor are they a true intermediary because they're actually working for the drug or the device company, so it really distorts the heart of the healthcare system, which is the trust between a patient and their doctor. And until that changes, the kind of disasters that I describe in the book will only continue, and I wanted to take just a moment to, you know, just talk about what those disasters are. You know, the first one that I talk about is, is Johnson's baby powder, and the fact that the company has known for 70 years that its baby powder has been contaminated with asbestos, and yet sold this product to mothers for their babies. And you know, at the height of the popularity of this product, half of all babies in the United States, and I'm sure some huge share in India, had their bottoms dusted with Johnson's baby powder. And then I tell the story about Tylenol. And you know, Tylenol is seen as, widely seen as the safest pain pill out there. In fact, it is by far the most dangerous over the counter medicine sold. It causes more death and injury than all other over the counter medicines combined. So I I show the story of how Tylenol got to this terribly dangerous space and and hopefully provide warnings to people about being careful about using this drug and. I walked through a series of other prescription drugs and devices. The first is EPO, that was the Johnson and Johnson sold as a cancer drug, even though Johnson and Johnson knew that it was actually Miracle Grow to tumors. So instead of curing your cancer, it actually secretly made it worse. And they knew this, kept it secret for something like 15 years, and around 500,000 Americans died as a result. And then I tell the story that that you and I started this with Risperdal and antipsychotic, and how the company illegally targeted the smallest of children with this drug and the oldest of the elderly, and that, you know, the it's routinely talked about that the opioid crisis is the worst public health crisis in American history. It's not. It's the antipsychotic crisis that has killed more than a million Americans easily, and to this day, kills three times as many patients as opioids and and I talk about the lies that that Johnson and Johnson told criminal lies. They eventually pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the marketing of these medicines and, and, you know, covered up their their their actions by telling doctors, you know, don't worry, no one is ever going to catch you. And I know this because I've seen the grand jury sworn testimony of the company's sales representatives who did this, you know, and then I walked through the opioid crisis, you know. I'm sure you've seen some of the TV shows about the Sacklers and Purdue pharma causing the opioid crisis. And everybody thinks that the Sacklers and Purdue pharma are the worst of the worst. You know, as a former Johnson and Johnson executive told me, they're the hikers compared to Johnson and Johnson, even just when you look at the opioids, you know, at the height of the opioid prescription epidemic in the United States, about 10% of the bodies that showed up in morgues had a Purdue pharma product in their system. 60% had a J and J product in their system. So why is it that the media, particularly the American media, has sold this story that Purdue pharma and the Sacklers are sort of the sole responsible parties for this epidemic. How is it that Johnson and Johnson has gotten away with its much more important role, and nobody knows it, and that's a really important part of the book, is the incredible failure of all of the institutions that should have caught this company, stopped them and brought accountability. You know, the first one, obviously, is the FDA, has played a disastrous role in enabling these, these, these terrible moments. And then the American media, you know, I worked for the New York Times, I worked for the Wall Street Journal. We should have done a much better job, but Johnson and Johnson is one of the largest advertisers in the world. They have enormous influence on American reporters. You know, the kind of influence that Purdue pharma, this tiny one product company, couldn't hope to get which is one of the big reasons that Purdue pharma was the focus of all those stories, and not j and j and then I tell stories about metal on metal, hip implants and vaginal mesh. You know, two huge disasters that, by the way, had enormous echo effects in India. You know, millions of patients in India were affected by those products as well. And in fact, there's a new book out about just the vaginal mesh scandal in India. So, you know, I didn't really tell the India story in most of these things. It's such a complicated story that I decided to focus almost exclusively on the United States, but there is an Indian Echo to each one of these disasters. And you know, one of those echoes, the vaginal mesh, one has its own book out right now in India. But, you know, I thought you would ask me that I don't know offhand. I'll tell you in a minute. Yeah, the book has been sent to me, and it's wonderful. Anyway, it's the book has this. And then, of course, I tell the the covid vaccine story and how, you know, everyone's sort of in the United States, covid vaccines from Pfizer and moderna are suddenly controversial, but nobody really revisits the J and J vaccine, which is was by far the more dangerous of all of them. You know, it caused a clotting disorder. It caused Guillain Barre Syndrome. It wasn't particularly effective. So these dangers not. Made no sense, and it was withdrawn. Whereas, you know, Pfizer's and moderna's vaccines, obviously, are continued to be sold around the world.

Tara Khandelwal: 20:58

I think that I really like the way that the book is structured, because, as you said, you go through each of these tragedies honestly. When I read the baby powder section, and realized that it had so much abestos, which leads to ovarian cancer, and you give those case studies, I had no idea. And I did a Google search about baby powder in India, and it's being sold in abundance here. And then I looked at the labels, and the labels are no chemicals, organic, all of these like beautiful words that will compel mothers to keep buying it. I know that in every Indian household there is Johnson baby powder. I know that I have grown up with it, and I have two younger siblings that I know I've seen my mother use it copiously on them. And just to think that these everyday household products can cause so much harm is insane to me. And I think that the EPO drug chapter, where you know, you know that this drug actually causes tumors to grow, but you are setting it as an anti cancer drug, is just so crazy to me. And my biggest question when I was reading this book, and then you also talk about, yeah, the drug that causes male breasts in young boys and leaves them disfigured. So all of these things, this history of negligence that you have covered. So my biggest question that when I was reading this book is, you know, how come nobody is talking about this. How come, even in India, Johnson, Johnson products are the pinnacle of consumer goods, you know, for babies, for band aids, all of this. Nobody is talking about any of this. Before your book, I had no idea any of this was happening. You know, touch upon it in the book a lot. You know, the complicit FDA, how Johnson, Johnson threatens to pull advertising out of TV networks and media companies if they threaten to expose anything about this. But I wanted to ask, you know, why isn't this spoken about? Mod? What can we do to sort of get this out there? A little bit more? First of all,

Gardiner Harris: 23:07

you know, it's not out there, because this company, arguably its core competency, is cover ups and keeping itself out of the news for all of these disasters. Tara, you're a book person. You know this, particularly in business books, 90% of business books are these positive books that tell you stories that you already know, like how Amazon was created and conquered the world and why it's such a great company. How you know Facebook was founded. You know, they're these sort of laudatory books telling you stories you you already know, but giving you nice little details about them. And then maybe 9.9% of business books are how this company that collapsed really collapsed. But in all of these 99.9% of the business books, you go into the book knowing how it's going to end. You know the story to begin with, because it's been covered endlessly in newspapers. So, you know, the book about Enron collapsing in fraud. You've been reading about this, you know, it's fraud, and you and and it's not particularly surprising. I think one of the problems with my book is, and I apologize if this sounds arrogant, but its originality. You know, I'm telling you a story that you really haven't heard. You know, I didn't write all these stories in the New York Times. I really kind of wasn't allowed to and and so I am talking to you about a company that you think is the greatest, you think is the most admired. And I'm actually telling you, it's just the opposite. It's one of the great history's greatest serial killers. And I think there's a kind of a disconnect that happens, like, I didn't get a review in the New York Times, you know, despite all my years working there, I didn't get a review in The Wall Street Journal, despite all my years working there, part of that might be because I'm critical of both papers, but I think a lot of it is just like, What am I supposed to do with this? You know, I accuse Johnson and Johnson of contributing to the deaths of more than 2 million Americans. You know, it's a wholly original charge, and it's because I got epidemiologists to add up dead babies and dead adults for me, but again, it's nothing that's been out there before, and I think a lot of journalists are just like, I don't even know what to do with this. So it didn't get kind of the attention in the book reviews. It didn't really make news, because I think you. I just think it is so unusual and it, you know, it took me a long time to persuade my publisher that, you know, that we needed to go through this. We went through huge legal reviews because this story is so original, you know, we were worried we'd get sued by, you know, Johnson, and Johnson, and many of the people we met, was

Tara Khandelwal: 26:11

gonna ask you about that. So, yeah, was there any backlash?

Gardiner Harris: 26:16

You know, we haven't been, and I think it, you know, I think the company is just hoping that it kind of goes away. And I'm sure they're, they're sort of worried that if they sued, it would just give it more attention. But, you know, that's one of my explanation. You know, it is. It has been disappointing to me that my former colleagues, you know, I make news here, for instance. As you may know, in my bio, I subsequently, you know, I was a reporter in India for a while, and I came back and was a White House correspondent for The New York Times. So I got to sort of the top of the of the mountain on journalism. And you know, when you're in those positions, it's not unusual for you to get secret documents. You know, national security documents. What is unusual is to get documents from grand juries in the United States. They are the last truly secret institutions here. The New York Times has not had the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, I don't believe there's been a large media organization the United States that had that has had a single Grand Jury file from a single grand jury for more than 50 years. I have hundreds of Grand Jury files from three separate grand juries involving Johnson and Johnson. That is one of the reasons why I can make these extraordinary charges, because I have, you know, the secret grand jury, sworn testimony of company executives and and again, I think my colleagues are just like they don't know what to do about that, because it's, it's nothing they've ever seen.

Tara Khandelwal: 28:04

I think these things take a long time to sort of come into the limelight, and then when it does happen, it's like a juggernaut. And I definitely think word of mouth and readers like me, who you know, I'm going to post about this, and more people are going to read about it, and then sort of sooner or later, everyone knows about it. These things can't remain secret for that long, and you have put it out there for the whole world to see. And I think it's so explosive, and it's so shocking, and it's so ubiquitous their products that everyone is going to want to know about this, because it's scary. I wouldn't want any of my friends to use Johnson baby powder on their children at all. I would want them against that my husband's I was talking to my husband, and I was talking to him about Tylenol, and he said, because his mother works a lot in the US, and he said that she used to actually buy Tylenol and get it back to India, because she thought it was so safe and and have it, you know. So there's everyone. These products have touched everybody's lives, and it's just so scary. But coming to, you know, the research part of the book, you mentioned that you had these sources that have given you these pages of pages from these grand juries, which is never the case you also and the book is, is, is long. It's 568, pages with 200 pages just for notes, References and sources. So it's really, really bad research. You're not making these claims without backing it up with proper evidence. You look at case files, articles, personal accounts, private company documents. You know, one example is Surat. Was a letter by Dr Alfred Wiener, a consultant to J and J, which revealed that the company and even FDA ignored warnings about talc. So what was your research process like? Let's come to the writing of this book. How did you begin the research process, and how did you begin piecing this all together? Well,

Gardiner Harris: 29:58

Tara, you know, one of my great flaws as a journalist is that I have always spent too much time on reporting. You know, I always sort of want to find the next cool thing before just sort of sitting down and writing. And this happened in spades on this project. I, you know, it took me five years of work, and a big reason is that I just couldn't stop digging. You know, I just wanted the next documents that talk to the next executive. I just kept digging and digging and digging and, you know, I the, you know, 95% of the book is, you know, I probably could have done this book in a year, you know, and save myself, you know, just. So much agony, but I did want to find that stuff. And you know, I do have a website, Gardner harris.com that was actually set up by several friends of mine in India. And the website has a document section where I put nearly all these documents. Now, there are some secret documents, like the grand jury, ones that I cannot reveal, for fear that it might reveal my the pattern of documents might reveal my sourcing. But nearly all of the other you know, there are hundreds of 1000s of pages of documents that you can go look yourself. You can do your own research on this, and that includes trial transcripts, that includes internal 1000s of of internal company documents that I got from sources and, you know, interviews with people, I ended up interviewing hundreds of executives and former executives, in part because the grand jury files actually had employee rosters with their names and cell phone numbers. So I could call these people, you know, I, I, I will tell you that I looked throughout these rosters for that sales rep who I met at the airport, and I never did find her again. Unfortunately, I'm not sure why. So, you know, one of my great hopes is that she reads the book and sees herself mentioned, and, and, and, you know, reaches out at some point, but that, you know, that's not happened, but the process was essentially one of, you know, reading documents, going to see people talking to sources. You know, I did years of that sort of research before I really wrote the first word and then started gradually. You know, writing sections of the book, I will tell you that the original manuscript was roughly twice as long as the book you have before you. I had even more products. Again. Tara, this is what I do. I go overboard. And thank God I had some really good editors who said, you know, Gardner, okay, I know you got to stop. And, you know, as it is, you've got way too much, and we're going to have to cut this in half, which was a terribly painful process to me. There was a lot of stories lost that I thought were really important and and, you know, the thing is, Tara, the reason why this book is so important is I did a couple of these. I wrote about a couple of these disasters in the New York Times. And each time, people would say, Oh, well, the company might have made a mistake in this one instance, but it's a great company. So, you know, I'm not changing my mind about it. And so to kind of hit, you know, to deal with that objection, I was like, Okay, I need to tell you, you know, originally I thought I need to tell you 15 different stories. You know, it's not criminality and lies aren't the exception for this company. It's the rule. And so that's my hope is that by telling you in a very dispassionate way exactly what happened with each one of these, of these disasters and that cost millions of lives, that you will see that this is A company that that that is really, you know, essentially, a mafia family,

Tara Khandelwal: 34:32

yeah. And I also like that in the beginning of the book, you speak a little bit about how it was set up and the history of that family, and how, you know, the brothers took it over, and by the third generation, then, you know, the the third generation couldn't really run it, and then it started becoming professionally managed, and like that piece of business history as well, I wanted to ask you about all the things that you couldn't put inside the book, because I'm sure there's a lot two things, actually. One is that, you know, could you tell me, maybe, about another product that you probably, you know, research on, but you didn't include in the book. And do you know, or could you shed any light on the India story? I know that's not sort of in the book, but I'm just curious, you know, as a consumer of this product in India and so many people, you're consuming it, if you could shed a little bit of light on the India shadow? Sure.

Gardiner Harris: 35:30

So I, you know, I think one of the things that I do want to say before I launch into some of these other products is that there is a, really, there's a character arc in the book, as you know, Tara, about the company, the company actually. Does start out the the you know, the 20th century is one of the most ethical companies around. And when it is run by the second generation this guy, Robert Wood Johnson, the second he really did do an admirable job building this extraordinarily ethical company. And as you said, once the family is sort of pushed aside, and professional managers come in, it really starts to change. But the change is really slow, and baby powder is a great way of looking at it, because, you know, they they sold baby powder for for 60 years, not knowing that it was dangerous, I mean, and not knowing that asbestos was a problem and all that. And then in the 1950s and 60s, they start to get hints that there's asbestos there and that asbestos is really a problem. But you can kind of see they're like, well, but it's a small amount of asbestos. What's the big deal? And then as they realize that small amounts of asbestos are a very big deal. You know, microscopic quantities of asbestos can kill you. They start covering it up, and the company starts going down a dark path. And they basically decide, you know, in the late 70s, they're going to sell this contaminated product, you know, to women and children and once you kind of decide to do that, you can kind of start doing anything. And that's when, you know, the Tylenol stuff gets worse. That's when they launch, you know, shortly thereafter they launch EPO. They quickly realize EPO is very dangerous, but they do it anyway. And so you see this company, and by the end, with vaginal mesh, you know, well, before they launch this product, they know it's going to ruin the lives of women like by then, they're so far down This Dark Road, they're they're sort of creating products for evil, like, it's just, it's just, you know, from the get go, they're doing terrible things. And so some of the products, you know, there's a, there's a whole cluster of products that, this is a company that calls itself the baby company, and there's a whole cluster of products that actually have attacked the health of babies and killed babies. And then, you know, it's also a company that sort of brags about that they're friendly to women. They support nursing programs. You know, one of the reasons that women are so fond of it is that when you leave the hospital with your baby, usually they have given the hospital this sort of package of Johnson baby products, and you go home with your baby in one arm and this package of Johnson baby products in the other. And the affection toward Johnson and Johnson that that engenders really never leaves women, because it they come to kind of together this, you know, this wonderful moment when you go home with your child and you go home with Johnson and Johnson, and so I, I, I had a bunch more products that attacked women in their reproductive organs. And I had a few more products that attack babies, for instance, on the women. One there was this, what's known as a power morselator. If a woman gets a hysterectomy, it's often a a a very serious procedure where they cut open your abdomen to get to your uterus, and there's long been a hope that that the surgery could could be far more laparoscopic, like a much smaller incision with a much less recovery period. And so Johnson and Johnson developed this power more Slater, which was basically this tiny little blender that surgeons would insert into, you know, a woman's abdomen, and it would essentially, you know, blend up the uterus in the woman and stuck out the the blended up cells into this tube. But the problem is that uterus is often contain cancerous endometrial cells. You know, not just women who have endometriosis, but you you can sometimes have cancer in your uterus. It's very well contained, so you don't know it. And this is an what's known as an occult cancer. And so by taking these little blenders and blending up your uterus, these little blenders took these cancerous cells and splattered them all across the woman's abdomen, inside of her, essentially making it. Impossible to treat. So it turned out, one out of 300 women who had this procedure ended up getting terrible cancer, and most of them died. And the company knew this and kept it secret, and you know, it's just sort of one of those where you're like, Are you kidding me? And and so I had a chapter on that, and that went so that's one of, I think, four or five products that that I, I would, I wrote about in the original version of the manuscript, and that that got taken out. A lot of the other outtakes were patient stories. You know, I'm a former reporter, you and I both know Tara that the power of these stories is often through, you know, the lens of regular people. And I, and I wanted the book to have a lot more of those regular people voices. I spent a lot of time trying finding people to whom these things had happened, and the editors just said, look, it's just too long. Gardner, we have to take a lot of these voices out. Again, heartbreaking to me, but, but, but, you know, I think they know what they're doing the India story, you know, as you know, India is endlessly complicated, right? I I have spent a lot of time in India, and I often tell friends that, you know, it's the most interesting place on the planet. You have 850 different languages. You You know, people ask me about Indian food, and I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Are you? You know, because the regional cuisines in India are so spectacularly different and wonderful and so, you know, even describing the India side of this story like is impossible, because, you know, there were parts of these stories in, you know, in northern India, there were parts of them in the northeast, there were Parts of them in Southern India, each time, slightly different things that so I heard echoes of these things happening in this part of India or in that part of India. But as you know, it's so hard to tell, you know, I was a correspondent from there, and my editors would often ask me, Well, what's the India side of things? And I would always be like, I don't even know what you're asking me. You know? I can tell you what the side of things is from Uttar Pradesh. I can tell you what the side of things is from Chennai, but I can't tell you what the India story is because it's 1.4 billion people who, I'm sure you know this Tara, but the genetic differences between southern Indians and northern Indians is wider than the differences between Europeans and and and Chinese. You know, your country is so spectacularly diverse. You know, the only place that is more diverse than India is Africa. So like, it's impossible to tell what the India story is and do it justice.

Tara Khandelwal: 43:53

Yeah, I think maybe this is an open call for any writers out there listening to go and research more about this and expose what's happening with this company in India. I would certainly like to know a lot more about because when I did little bit of research, I didn't find anything except, you know, amazing marketing campaigns from this company. So definitely would want to learn more about that.

Gardiner Harris: 44:16

I do want to say one thing about the India situation. I mean, as you know, India for decades has relied almost exclusively on its public health system and hospital and hospitals, and over the last 20 years, there's really been this development of private hospital networks and private care. And for certainly India's middle class and its upper class, they rely entirely on this private system. And there are great benefits to that. I don't want to say that there aren't. But you know, India is really kind of at a crossroads between, you know, deciding whether to invest more in its public system, or whether sort of to abandon that and and just sort of allow the private system to flourish. And I, and I think you know, the American experience with private health care is is a cautionary tale. And I, and I, and I, and I think India needs to sort of really have, you know, a serious conversation with itself about whether it wants to go down the road that it's been going down for the last 15 to 20 years.

Tara Khandelwal: 45:28

I do agree. I think that it is a costly tale, and it just shows you, sort of, you know how you can't there's a limit to sort of capitalism versus healthcare, right? And if you sort of mix the two, then the incentives are not aligned. You want to make money, but you also want to save you and you but. Have to do it while doing good, and you have to do it while actually saving people's lives. I don't understand how those two, you know, get so mixed up and can't go hand in hand. But anyway, that's a larger conversation. But I think you're absolutely right that you know, personally, also as a consumer, I see that. I see so many companies now selling supplements saying that I will help you sleep better. Protein supplements, you know, all these fads, lot of VC money coming in, and honestly, we I'm very into fitness. So at least for me, I'm very careful about what these companies are telling me, because I've also spoke like I speak to people like you, IV books, but I mean, simply just, you know, in my own family, my father's diabetic, and I see him consuming, yeah, no, it's okay. And my I see him consuming things that have a lot of sugar in them, but the label says that, oh, it's completely healthy. It's organic. I look and read the label, and I see, okay, it's just sugar and other forms, you know, but people just don't know. They're just not aware. They don't know what they're putting inside their bodies, and it's becoming very insidious. So I totally agree, I think that this is a cautionary tale, and we really need to pay more attention. And would you be publishing? You know, the story is that you left out in the personal stories, because to me, as well as a reader, obviously, you know those human stories that you put into the book, they were the most powerful, and they really brought home what you were trying to say. So would you be publishing them anywhere? Do you think

Gardiner Harris: 47:22

maybe someday? I have no immediate plans to do so I'm starting to work on my next book, and I want to sort of head toward that, you know, I think Tara, you, you and I both have, have spent our lives with editors and and you know, they are in the process is incredibly painful, and I have often screamed at my editors. No, it can't be right. No. But, you know, almost invariably, they are right. And so I sort of, I do, I have the original manuscript. It's still with me. And I, you know, I sometimes bring it to my heart to just, you know, remember with fondness. So like I would say, I took at least a year of my life to write and research, maybe a year and a half these many things that have never seen the light of day, and that's a year that I will never get back. So will I do something with those, maybe someday, but I have no immediate plans. Thank you for being interested in them.

Tara Khandelwal: 48:34

Yeah, I think it was very interesting conversation. And I think one thing that also made me think was that a lot of these are to do with women and babies and women's health. And one of the most shocking things in the book is, you know how Women's Health is repeatedly sidelined, right like when the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act was passed, it was 345, pages long, but only two pages dealt with products like tack and powder, shampoos, blush cosmetics, part of it and this oversight also, you know, you mentioned how it cost women because of the things to be spoken about and the things that you write about in the book. So, yeah, I think that a lot of it is also just to do with how Women's Health is overlooked, right? And this company is tapping into that aspect, whereas women and babies, even when you know the suffering is right in front of people,

Gardiner Harris: 49:27

yeah, I mean baby powder really, the the this, you know, the lower messages and baby powder are really kind of about racism and about misogyny, right? Because the for many people, they use talcum powder, baby powder to whiten their skin. You know, as you know, in India, the biggest selling cosmetics are skin whiteners. And a a one of the more basic ways of getting skin whitening is to put talcum powder on your skin. And so they sell it as a they sell it with words like purity and the rest. But what they're really signaling is you can be whiter with this and and and one of the reasons that it's associated with ovarian cancer so strongly, of course, is that there's a very strong sense in the baby in baby powder. In fact, it's Johnson, and Johnson surveys showed that is the most widely recognized scent in the world, and women use it in their crotch area to cover up vaginal smells, which they're embarrassed about. And they're embarrassed about it because they're, you know, these misogynistic messages that there's something wrong with vaginal smells. So, you know, all of these products play into some of the darkest strains of. Of you know humanity.

Tara Khandelwal: 50:50

So for anyone who wants to write an expose or dig into uncomfortable truth, obviously it's not easy, because you are. It's sort of like David versus Goliath, you know, you're one person against this huge system. What advice would you give to people who want to write more about these kind of things, but are scared of the consequences.

Gardiner Harris: 51:12

Try doing something else. Get counseling, you know, don't, don't do it. It's, it's, you know, it's hard. It's, you fight, fighting. The system almost never works, and puts you in sort of tough you know, I lived for five years with these horrible stories haunting me, and longer than that, because, of course, you know, it was really 20 years ago that I started learning about these stories and and having them live inside of me. You know, there's something wrong with me that that I can't really live without trying to get these stories known and trying to get accountability for the people who have done such terrible things. I think I, you know, I grew up with daddy issues or something like that. You know, I'm hoping that your listeners are healthier than I and can sort of move on with other things. Because it's, I think it's a really, I think it's really tough thing to do, and it's, it's these sort of stories are very hard to live with.

Tara Khandelwal: 52:20

I can't imagine, because sort of like hearing them firsthand from all of these people, and just seeing how pervasive you know this, this company is, and how pervasive its tentacles are, and how it reaches through everything, policymakers, marketing, media, doctors, and is still selling products that are bad for you. It's really heartbreaking. What you mentioned a next book. So I'm just curious what, what is your next book about?

Gardiner Harris: 52:51

I'm not going to talk about it, you know. It's another troubled thing, and I'll just, you know, I don't want to warn you know the folks I'm looking at yet until I have to so but listen, Tara, I am so grateful for your interest and so grateful that you read the book so closely and that you seem to like it so much. It's, you know, it's conversations like this that really make me happy that I did this effort, and that, you know, the message is getting out there, and I'm, you know, so grateful that there are people literally on the other side of the world for me, who, who so appreciate the work.

Tara Khandelwal: 53:36

Oh, thank you so much for this conversation, and for, you know, writing this book, because I think definitely, you know, even if it reaches sort of a few people here in India, maybe sort of, we can be a little more careful about kind of the products that we consume, and be a little more cognizant, I think, in general, about, you know, looking at labels and doing our own research. Because there is this whole market right now, whether it's, you know, people selling health food under wrong label, medicines, etc. I think we as consumers now need to get a lot more discerning, and I think work like this will help us really understand that. Yeah, we also need to take it into our hands and see what we are putting into our bodies. So thank you so much for this conversation. It's been eye opening and honestly a little bit scary, but to my listeners, keep questioning, keep holding people accountable, and never take safe at face value. And if you're listening right now, do us a favor. Hit follow on Spotify Apple podcast. You never miss an episode and tell us in the comments, if you found a brand that you've trusted your whole life and was actually hiding the truth, what would you do? Thank you so much for coming here and giving me your time. I really, really appreciate the conversation.

Gardiner Harris: 54:54

Thank you, Tara, take care.

Tara Khandelwal: 54:57

Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books and Beyond with bound. This

Michelle D'costa: 55:01

podcast is created by bound, a company that helps you grow through story. Find us at bound India on all social media platforms tune

Tara Khandelwal: 55:09

in every Wednesday as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia. You.