Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Why Corporations Are Evil, Example 666

'Phantom' Motrin Recall Probe Intensifies. Excerpts:

A Congressional probe into a "phantom" 2009 recall of Motrin pain relief caplets is causing headaches for the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson.

In July 2009, Johnson & Johnson's consumer division, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, began officially recalling Motrin caplets thought to be dissolving improperly resulting in possible adverse effects.

And:

"Rather than doing the right thing and announcing a recall, we have learned that the drug company hired contractors to basically sneak into stores to purchase the products as if they were legitimate customers," Towns said in a statement last week. Towns called the Motrin case a "phantom recall" at a May 27 hearing.

And:

Last week, the Oversight Committee uncovered a document titled "Motrin Purchase Project" purportedly sent to WIS by Inmar, a Winston-Salem, N.C.-based supply chain management specialist. Towns's spokeswoman said the document indicates that a division of Inmar was contracted by Johnson & Johnson's consumer division, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, and that WIS, in turn, was subcontracted by Inmar. WIS workers were instructed to go into stores and buy up all the Motrin IB Caplets they found, according to the document, which was made public by the committee. "There must be no mention of this being a recall of the product!" the Motrin Purchase Project memo read.

And:

Documents supplied to the Oversight Committee by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showed that the FDA originally found out about the alleged secret Motrin recall last year, and looked into it, prompting the official recall, which was never publicized and involved 88,000 caplets thought to be problematic. The FDA was initially told by Johnson & Johnson that its contractors were merely performing a statistical sampling, according to an FDA document made public by the committee. The dissolution problem was first identified in November of 2008, the FDA document said.

The Timeline is as follows: They knew about the problem since November 2008, didn't start working with the FDA until May of 2009, started covering their asses with a "Phantom Recall" in July 2009(when they started their "Official Recall"), and still aren't responding to this Congressional probe as of Tuesday.

Who says Corporations don't care about you and me?

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