this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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The complaint is here. Start on page 23 for the specifics. Basically, they're saying the patients in the study were actually plaintiffs in other litigation, and it came out in that litigation that many were known to have been exposed to asbestos fibers in homes, schools, or workplaces.
Holy crap that was a crazy read. LTL, the North Carolina shell company owned by J&J, tragically lost sales revenue and went bankrupt "because of their 2020 study". "To set the record straight" they are de-anonymizing the data to dox 5 of the participants and then going through those cancer patient's lives to say that they had contact with industrial asbestos at some point. Their main claim against the only patient they have positively identified, Lanzo because he tried to sue J&J, is that his middle school locker room and basement later had asbestos pipes removed. Their claim against #2 after matching her tumor stats is that her dad worked with pipes that had asbestos. The third, again matched by tumor measurements, had a husband who once told a UCLA doc on a visit that he was doing some demolition that might've had asbestos. The fourth, "matched" only by her age, smoked and sued Kent cigarettes which were proven to contain asbestos. The last is an age match to a cleaning lady who sued J&J previously and said in court she cleaned buildings and navy ships that "possibly had asbestos".
Their claim is that since at least one patient might've come into contact with asbestos from a source that wasn't baby powder the entire study is false. Basically, they dig through peoples lives and if they ever visited somewhere that has any asbestos on record or lived with someone who mentioned asbestos worries to a doctor they think you should be disqualified from being linked to Johnson and Johnson.
Which seems rather legitimate.
Except that there were over 20 participants in the study and J&J is trying to claim potential, possible exposures to asbestos that they could only come up for 6 of them means that nothing in the study is correct.
That is a significantly high number as it is six 'proved' cases. Some people wouldn't even know if they were exposed by other sources and even if they knew, would it be documented? Chances are we have all been exposed to asbestos and other carcinogenic chemicals both natural and man-made. The correlation was very weak to begin and it seems some of the people that did this study did willfully ignore details that make is suspect. I like to think all scientists are working on our behalf but there is a monetary motive to attain certain positive results in this case. We shouldn't automatically give them a pass.
They don't automatically get a pass. They get peer reviewed.
It's also not one study. They've done multiple over the years, with hundreds of participants. They've done studies where they include people with known environmental exposure, and they still find that exposure to talcum powder counts as part of cumulative exposure.
Is it possible they're just flagrantly lying about their research results? Of course. Tell good enough lies and it becomes up to reproduction studies to find contradicting results. But there's as much money, if not more, to be found in finding those contradicting results, and yet...
exactly. J&J are the victims in this situation. People do not realise it yet. Most of those int he legal community know the real fault lies in the stupid lawyers that J&J used first time round. Lousy and shoddy.