No More Tears The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson

In 2004, Gardiner Harris, then a pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times, arrives early for a flight and sits at an airport bar. The woman beside him sells drugs for Johnson & Johnson, and she tells him about unethical sales practices and the damage they did to her family. The conversation changes how he covers the company and the wider drug industry.

This is investigative non-fiction. Harris builds it from his reporting for the newspaper and from research he has continued since that first meeting. His subject is Johnson & Johnson, among the oldest and most trusted names in American medicine and the largest healthcare conglomerate in the world, long pictured as the gentle baby company.

He sets out to show a different record, one of deceit and dangerous corporate practices stretching over decades. The cases include Baby Powder and its link to cancer, risks tied to Tylenol, and a criminal campaign to sell antipsychotics.

They also include a drug given to support cancer patients that raises the risk of tumor growth. He also examines the marketing of the fentanyl product Duragesic, which he says sped up opioid addiction on a scale comparable to the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma.

The book suits readers who want documented corporate accountability reporting about medicine they may have used at home. It reads as a sustained, angry indictment built on evidence, with each case adding to the picture.