The story of Johnson and Johnson’s huge fine in Oklahoma, which appeared over the summer, exposed how companies can be held liable for the effects of their products. In August this year a judge in Oklahoma ordered Johnson and Johnson to pay $572m to the state to mitigate the effects of the state having to deal with an opioid addiction crisis. You will find a selection of articles below to help you with the background to this. There are now many stories about America going through an ‘opioid crisis’. One report on CNN saying an estimated 1.7 million individuals in the United States suffered from substance use disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers. So what is the story here? For this assessment we are looking at Johnson and Johnson, but you will see from the stories below Johnson and Johnson were just one company for which opioids proved to be a very profitable product. But at what cost? The stories below point towards how drug companies used a marketing strategy based on the redefinition of pain. The thrust was that nobody needed to live with any pain when the company’s product could relieve it. But if a paracetamol would do why have something stronger? (Don’t forget opioids are based around opium). It seems that the suggestion that opioids would be better hinged on the idea that they would control the pain better and that they were not addictive. But these are questionable assumption. For many ailments opioids were probably not necessary, and it seems they are addictive. So how did the companies, including Johnson and Johnson, succeed in persuading doctors to prescribe so many opioid drugs? Read the articles below, they outline some questionable marketing practices, the manipulation of scientific findings on whether the drugs are addictive and how doctors were put in positions with clear conflicts of interest. Also below you will see an article suggesting that, having sold opioids so successfully in the US, companies went on to repeat the formula in other countries and India is mentioned.
You will also find below a link to a clip of the American show ‘Last Week Tonight’ with John Oliver. Be warned, he swears a bit, but the clip is funny and shocking. It is not about Johnson and Johnson but if you read the articles also you will see how what Oliver talks about is connected.
What should be the responsibility of a drug company? How should Johnson and Johnson have behaved? What are the ethical issues here – surely honesty, integrity, recognising conflicts of interest and impact on different stakeholder groups must be among them. So – a complex, but utterly fascinating case for you to examine.
