#Johnson And Johnson

[wingslovesfiction]

Look at this saga.

[bumblebeerror]

Hey so. I have something I need you guys to know on this disability pride month.

TLDR: Johnson and Johnson has a patent on a drug that is effective against drug-resistant tuberculosis, a curable disease that kills many people in poorer countries. That patent runs out this august, but they have a secondary patent on the drug with an added compound that makes it work better - and are planning to use this patent to keep generic versions of this drug from being produced and distributed to poorer countries. I cannot underline enough that tuberculosis is still a massive killer and is entirely curable, but people die of it because of this patent making the medication too expensive to obtain.

John’s video this week goes more in depth, but the call to action is needed. Spread this. Know about this. Write to the company. If you care at fucking all about this, please tell someone. Johnson and Johnson needs to know that their consumers will not be turning a blind eye to them trying to squeak around this. Put the blood on their hands where it belongs. Please.

https://youtu.be/tMhgw5SW0h4 (John Green’s video about this)

[ursulazandt]

[sweet-bazzle-bean]

I don't think John has posted here yet, but this is a call to action to put pressure on Johnson & Johnson who are needlessly extending a patent for Bedaquiline, a drug that could save hundreds of thousands of lives per year.

What a good opportunity for tumblr to try to negate some very bad John Green karma while also fighting for a good cause, yeah?

(Action items from the doobly-doo)

Tell Johnson and Johnson that evergreening their patent on bedaquiline, which will deny millions of people access to live-saving treatment, is a violation of their corporate credo! (NOTE: this one is quite lengthy and confusing and that is by design! They are trying to limit the number of complaints by putting so many barriers between you and submitting the report. Just keep going! Answer the questions to the best of your ability and get the report in.)

Tell them on twitter!

Tell them on this other twitter!

Tell them on facebook!

Tell them on instagram!

[labutansa]

via african_stream

[davidaugust]

Johnson & Johnson is attempting again to offload its talc liability onto a new subsidiary company which will then declare bankruptcy. Their lawyers think Johnson & Johnson shouldn’t have to pay the multi-billion dollar settlement for cancer cases, citing the legal precedent of “I don’t wanna.”

- written by me, as seen in This Week This Week on Thursday

[dosesofcommonsense]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Johnson and Johnson's bankruptcy gambit fails

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has foiled Johnson & Johnson’s plan to use a bankruptcy scam called the Texas Two-Step to escape paying 40,000 women who were injured when the pharma giant sold them asbestos-tainted talcum powder to dust over their vulvas, leading to gruesome cancers:

https://www.wxxinews.org/2023-01-30/appeals-court-clears-the-way-for-more-lawsuits-over-johnsons-baby-powder

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit

Back in 2018, a jury awarded $4.69 billion to 22 women whose ovarian cancer was caused by J&J’s toxic product, $4.14b of which was punitive, awarded because J&J ignored the link between applying talcum powder to one’s genitals and cancer, and continued to market its products as a “Shower to Shower” genital deodorant:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/13/health/4-69-billion-verdict-johnson--johnson-talcum-powder/index.html

With thousands more lawsuits in the pipeline, the company sprung into action, restructuring in Texas using a quirk of the state’s merger laws that allows a single company to “merge” into two separate entities.

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/BO/htm/BO.10.htm

The Texas Two-Step is a corrupt gambit that uses this quirk to allow large companies to escape liability for their misdeeds, by creating one company that holds the assets and profitable businesses of the firm, and another company that holds the firm’s toxic products and the liabilities they produced. The “bad” company then declares bankruptcy, leaving the “good” company to walk away with the billions it made by harming people, and leaving the victims to squabble over the meager assets from the bankruptcy.

To maintain the pretense that this maneuver isn’t just a ruse to escape liability, companies undertaking the Texas Two-Step have the “good” company guarantee some of the liabilities of the “bad” company. That’s what J&J did, and the women it injured sued over it:

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/222003p.pdf

The appeals court didn’t find J&J’s bankruptcy persuasive. They found that any bankruptcy for the “bad” company should come after it had exhausted all guarantees the “good” company had made. Summarizing the court opinion Bloomberg’s Matt Levine writes, “You want to file for bankruptcy while you still have plenty of money to pay claims, but not too much money.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-31/matt-levine-johnson-johnson-s-jnj-bankruptcy-didn-t-work

J&J has vowed to appeal. If their appeal succeeds, it will be another blow against corporate accountability and against the bankruptcy system, both of which have are at their lowest ebb in living memory. Just the fact that J&J is still in business is remarkable. Poison talcum powder is only the latest salvo in J&J’s war on women’s reproductive organs — just a year ago, the company was ordered to pay hundreds of millions for selling women vaginal meshes, aggressively marketed for incontinence and prolapse, long after it learned that these meshes could permanently fuse with patient’s pelvic floors, leading to “severe pain, bleeding, infections, discomfort during intercourse.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/13/johnson-johnson-pelvic-mesh-implant-ads-case

J&J was also neck-deep in the opioid crisis, going to far as to commission a report from McKinsey entitled “Maximizing Value of the Narcotics Franchise,” on how to use its dominance of poppy-extract to corner the market on opioids:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/30/mckinsey-mafia/#everybody-must-get-stoned

It was the opioid sector that brought popular attention — and well-earned disgust — to the US bankruptcy. The criminal Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma and proprietors of OxyContin, used a nakedly corrupt move to shift their bankruptcy proceeding to Judge Robert Drain of the Southern District of New York:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#shoppers-choice

Drain is notoriously tolerant of corporate crime and is an enthusiastic booster for the principle of using bankruptcies to escape consequences for corporate mass-murder. Which is exactly what the Sacklers did, cramming through a bankruptcy deal that let them walk away with billions, stiffing the survivors of their opioid business:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/impunity-corrodes/#morally-bankrupt

J&J told women to put carcinogens down their underwear. For decades. It gave tens of thousands of women ovarian cancer. Then it tried to use Texas’s courts to walk away with billions. But this time, a court stopped them. This time there’s no separate system of justice, like the one that gave the Sacklers billions in dirty money. This time, the company might just have to pay for its crimes.

Image: James Wagstaff (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jesse/2256760407/

Mike Mozart (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/26191532093

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[Image ID: A picture of a white-out dust storm at Burning Man. A giant tulip rises out of the dust. Its petals are suggestive of a vulva. A giant bottle of Johnson and Johnson baby powder enters the frame from the top right corner.]

[autumn2may]

Johnson & Johnson is currently, like right this minute, trying to extend their patent on the TB drug bedaquiline, keeping it out of generic for another four years. TB killed about 30,000 people last week and is the world's deadliest infectious disease.

If this drug does not go generic now it could affect 6 million people in the next four years (the time it would take the "new" patent to run out). Out of those millions of people who get TB, but can't get bedaquiline, most of them will die. From a PREVENTABLE DISEASE.

Why is this happening? Money. But also, because TB is not an issue in countries like the US. We can afford its $1.50 a pill price. But if you live in a poor country, that's too much money to spend on something you need to take for up to four months.

J&J needs to let this drug go public and do its job in places that can't currently afford it. They need to help people, instead of trying to wring the last few drops of money out of one of their many products, at the cost of human lives. @sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog does a waaaay better job of explaining this than me. Check out the video and the video description for links and ways to help!

[weirdisnowthenewcool]

Hello, if you're feeling like doin something helpful today consider tweeting at Johnson and Johnson or making a complaint about the renewal of a patent on a tuberculosis drug that will, as always, disproportionately affect the global south. Not only will many die now, non-treatment of TB will lead to the evolution of more multi-drug resistant TB, a similar story to the evolution of strains of COVID we all know and love /s This is not a random campaign, this barrage will go on over the course of a week. The aim is to show that people in rich countries are paying attention and give a shit. You can help do this! For more information see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMhgw5SW0h4

Submit a report

https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/28704/report.html Submit a report about the renewable of a patent on bedaquiline a Turbuculosis drug. Here's the information you'll need: Market - where you're from Market you're concerned about - This box sucks. Treat it like a video game you're trying to get through the form to get to the end bit. I put south africa, Ghana also has incredibly high rates of TB death, if you want do some research on where TB deaths occur and choose that box but it dunt matter too much our purposes specifically. Select the sector related to your concern or issue - Other Select the Region where the violation took place. - Just any of them Select the Company related to your concern or issue - Unknown/other For area of concern: Buisness integrity, Manufacturing, Research and Development, and Patient Safety or Human Rights Complaint: Evergreening the bedaquiline patent is a violation of your own Credo and shows that your business can't be trusted. Hundreds of thousands will die if this is not stopped. The in access to this drug will lead not only to deaths now, but also in the future and multidrug resistant TB grows unchecked. Drop the efforts to enforce the secondary patents If you don't wanna do that, consider flooding their twitter and instagram with comments. The aim is to show we're paying attention. Talk to ur friends and family about it, pay attention!

[batattack409]

Johnson and Johnson are trying to extend a patent on bedaquiline, a lifesaving drug that important for treating tuberculosis.

Doing so will lead to deaths of millions of people worldwide. John Green sums up the situation well, with links in the description of the video for what you can do to help. The most important thing is to spread the word and let Johnson and Johnson know that people are aware of what their doing, and do not support it.

[vintageadsmakemehappy]

1955 Johnson & Johnson advertisement

[just-a-turtleduck]

I LOVE NERDFIGHTERIA I'M SO PROUD OF US ALL

[arcticmonkeysjunglepenguins]

Hey all you know tuberculosis right? That old timey disease. When was the last time you heard of someone dying from it? What if I told you that 30,000 people died of Tuberculosis LAST WEEK.

Now tuberculosis is curable. A key drug in the treatment of TB is Bedaquiline which Johnson & Johnson owns the patent for. It cost about $1.50 (USD) per pill. It is was created in 2003 and the patent is due to expire this month. After this generic version of the drug can be made lower the cost to 50c per pill. Which is vital in poorer nations as we can see from the comment posted below. HOWEVER in 2007 the filed a secondary patent. Meaning the drug will

To put it simply I am not happy about this. The secondary patent is an addition to the first and does not make major changes to the drug. The need to enforce this patent is purely motivated by greed. Which is not right. Johnson & Johnson is big company so it is hard to avoid but I want it to be know that decisions the company is making is going to have an impact on the world today.

People will get sick and die. It is estimated that if the patent was allowed to expire over 6 million lives would be saved over the next 4 years due to increase access.

So I just ask that you keep this in your minds and spread awareness of this decision made by Johnson & Johnson and if you have the time let them know you are unhappy with this decision.

The video that introduces me to this issues:

https://youtu.be/tMhgw5SW0h4

Johnson & Johnson Concern Report page:

https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/28704/report.html

[rolandtowen]

hello.

I have returned from the trenches of Twitter to inform yall that there is an effort to mobilize against Johnson & Johnson's decision to extend their patent on a life-saving tuberculosis drug. Renewing this patent will prevent millions of people from accessing life-saving care.

If you would like to learn more, watch this video:

If you would like to do something, you can make memes, @ J&J on social media, and report your concerns here:

https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/28704/report.html