Gardiner Harris estimates that Johnson & Johnson’s conduct caused the deaths of around two million Americans through three products alone. His new book accuses the company of turning repeated health scandals into a system for protecting sales and its reputation, and links the multinational to concealed information about erythropoietin (EPO) and cancer in Spain. The book’s aggregate mortality estimate remains unverified.
The allegations appear in 'No llores más: Los oscuros secretos de Johnson & Johnson', published by Capitán Swing in 2026. Harris argues that the company combined illegal marketing with negligence and relied on an army of lawyers as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gradually lost independence.
The book’s central charge is the gap between Johnson & Johnson’s trusted image and the conduct Harris describes. Official enforcement records document criminal and civil allegations concerning medicine marketing, while other claims remain disputed or unresolved. In a settlement of approximately $2 billion, Janssen agreed to plead guilty to one criminal violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act connected with the promotion of Risperdal. The agreement also covered investigations involving Invega and Natrecor, alongside claims brought by 45 states and federal authorities.
In an interview with ABC, the veteran journalist said the project drew threats and intensive legal scrutiny. Editorial blockages in several countries added to the obstacles, which cut the original manuscript by half. The final work runs to more than 500 pages.
Harris has covered the pharmaceutical industry for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. His account follows products that defined different periods of American life: talcum powder belonged to the baby boom, while painkiller Tylenol became another focus. The book also examines early antipsychotics and fentanyl.
For Harris, that commercial succession is also a history of corporate crisis management. Each blockbuster product became a cultural symbol, and each scandal supplied lessons that could contain the next one. He describes US healthcare as simultaneously the world’s best and worst system, with scientific capacity coexisting alongside extensive corruption.
One mechanism he highlights is the payment of doctors to work as part-time sales representatives. That claim puts medical influence at the centre of Johnson & Johnson’s business model, framing the scandals as more than isolated failures.
The opioid litigation offers a documented measure of the controversy. Johnson & Johnson agreed to contribute approximately $5 billion to a nationwide settlement over its role in opioid marketing and stopped national sales of opioid painkillers. The broader structure involving distributors was valued at about $26 billion and covered more than 3,000 lawsuits brought by states and municipalities.
The Spanish connection is especially serious in Harris’s account. He says Johnson & Johnson withheld information about EPO and cancer for more than a decade and estimates that the concealment caused thousands of deaths. The book also covers hip implants and vaginal meshes as cases beyond the three products included in his estimate of two million American deaths. Those mortality figures are distinct from the documented existence of litigation and regulatory investigations; the book’s aggregate estimate remains unverified.
Harris says concerns about defamation lawsuits delayed or obstructed the investigation’s release in several countries. He also dates the FDA’s gradual decline to 1992, when pharmaceutical companies began providing most of the agency’s funding.
That shift matters because the regulator was created to police an industry whose money increasingly supported it. Harris’s case so reaches beyond one company: he describes a health system in which legal resources and commercial influence can outlast public scrutiny.
The book describes a recurring pattern: blockbuster medicines and consumer products followed by allegations that the company concealed information and promoted drugs illegally, alongside institutional dependence. That pattern puts Johnson & Johnson’s carefully built public image under direct scrutiny. Harris treats corporate trust as an outcome of accountability rather than advertising.
The talc disputes show why the company’s public image remains contested. Johnson & Johnson maintains that its talc did not cause cancer and did not contain asbestos. Yet it stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the United States and Canada in 2020, then worldwide in 2023, switching to cornstarch. In 2023, the company proposed transferring $8.9 billion to its subsidiary LTL Management to fund talc claims over 25 years. It did not admit liability and continued to describe the allegations as scientifically unfounded; the proposal did not resolve the litigation.
Federal litigation in New Jersey still involved tens of thousands of claims concerning ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. A proposed 2026 settlement of roughly $5.5 billion reportedly covers about 76,000 claims, but depends on participation by at least 95% of claimants. The proposal would not automatically resolve the litigation.
The legal record does not establish a single uncontested scientific conclusion about talc. In one recent proceeding, a federal court rejected Johnson & Johnson’s claim against three scientists who had published research on a possible link between cosmetic talc and mesothelioma. The court found insufficient evidence that they knowingly or recklessly published false data. Johnson & Johnson continues to deny the allegations.
