Johnson & Johnson is finally facing a reckoning for its deadly refusal to warn women about the use of talcum powder. Like the tobacco industry, Johnson & Johnson suppressed research about the danger and used its power to stop the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from taking action. The tale of this muscling the government is now out, thanks to the product liability lawyers suing the company, and the New York Times publishing the story based on its own investigation and the internal documents the lawyers forced the company to produce.
As I reported in several posts on this blog nearly three years ago, one of the leading researchers on ovarian cancer has estimated that 10% of all the cases--more than 2000 a year--are a result of talc powder use. In its response to petitions for warning labels, the FDA acknowledged
that talc particles can enter a woman’s body via her vagina, and that such
particles can cause ovarian cancer.
Nevertheless the agency refused, and continues to refuse, to order a warning label because there is no “conclusive evidence.”
Even the National Women's Health Network, usually a reliable advocate for women, refused to include a warning in its newsletter to women when I appealed to them to act in 2015. I'm a believer in the precautionary principle, a way of managing risk. When certainty is absent, but the risk is great, the prudent thing to do is give a warning. In the case of talc, advising people to stop using the product and switch to corn starch as a good substitute, is a no-brainer.
The Times story reveals that as early as 1971, a senior staff member at Johnson & Johnson warned the company that its talc could be contaminated with asbestos, a notorious carcinogen.
Using Dr. Daniel Cramer's estimate of 10% of cases caused by talc use, that means that perhaps 100,000 women have suffered and most likely died unnecessarily since the company learned of the problem.
Johnson & Johnson is now facing nearly 12,000 ovarian cancer lawsuits, a fact that caused its stock to drop last Friday by 10 percent.
Dropping stock prices and billion dollar injury verdicts are hardly sufficient penalty for Johnson & Johnson's callous disregard for women's safety. Those responsible should go to jail.##
Monday, December 17, 2018
Thursday, September 6, 2018
On Being A Grandparent
The faces of your children and grandchildren are a living family tree. They put you in touch with your ancestors.
Some time after my oldest son, Eric, was born, I pulled out an old photograph, one of the few I have, of my father's mother. In it, she was younger than I'd ever seen her, and beautiful. I suddenly realized that her eyes and the top half of her face had been reproduced in the face of my beautiful son. Wide apart eyes, squared perfectly on his face.
Now, my grandson's face fascinates me. People tell me he is the image of his father, and yes, I agree. But he also looks like his mother, and sometimes he looks like me. And a few days later, he looks different again.
The potentiality of a grandchild is so varied. Follow in Mom's or Dad's footsteps, yes, possibly. But also find bliss in doing exactly, more or less, the same sorts of things their grandparents did. I experienced this myself when I became a Unitarian Universalist and told my mother about it. She recalled that her mother, my Grandmother, had made a habit of getting dressed for church on a Sunday morning, but instead of going to the same church week after week, would set out and end up in a church she had never been to before. Unknowing, I had searched for and chosen a non-traditional, non-conformist religion just as she had apparently done in her own way.
When you have a grandchild, you become the generation holding the family fort against death. It's both a bitter understanding and a call to share your wisdom with this new being. Most definitely, it's a rite of passage.
Some time after my oldest son, Eric, was born, I pulled out an old photograph, one of the few I have, of my father's mother. In it, she was younger than I'd ever seen her, and beautiful. I suddenly realized that her eyes and the top half of her face had been reproduced in the face of my beautiful son. Wide apart eyes, squared perfectly on his face.
Now, my grandson's face fascinates me. People tell me he is the image of his father, and yes, I agree. But he also looks like his mother, and sometimes he looks like me. And a few days later, he looks different again.
The potentiality of a grandchild is so varied. Follow in Mom's or Dad's footsteps, yes, possibly. But also find bliss in doing exactly, more or less, the same sorts of things their grandparents did. I experienced this myself when I became a Unitarian Universalist and told my mother about it. She recalled that her mother, my Grandmother, had made a habit of getting dressed for church on a Sunday morning, but instead of going to the same church week after week, would set out and end up in a church she had never been to before. Unknowing, I had searched for and chosen a non-traditional, non-conformist religion just as she had apparently done in her own way.
When you have a grandchild, you become the generation holding the family fort against death. It's both a bitter understanding and a call to share your wisdom with this new being. Most definitely, it's a rite of passage.
Thursday, February 8, 2018
Donald Trump's Cult of Personality
-->
-->
-->
In his What is character and why it reallydoes matter, Thomas A. Wright wrote, "The cult of personality
phenomenon refers to the idealized, even god-like, public image of an
individual consciously shaped and molded through constant propaganda and media
exposure. As a result, one is able to manipulate others based entirely on the
influence of public personality..."
-->
-->
-->
For the past year, I’ve heard
all the explanations of why about one-third of our population continues to
support Donald Trump. Nothing he does or says shakes that support. Asked his
view of Trump after revelations that he slept with a porn star just months
after Melania gave birth to their son, Baron, an Evangelical leader said Trump
gets a “mulligan” on that, a golf term meaning a do-over with no penalty.
I’ve spent some time trying
to understand a relative’s continued support of Trump, pointing out the damage
he has and continues to do to the environment, the poor, immigrants, our tax
system, regulations designed to ensure our health and safety, his support of White Supremacists and on and on.
None of it matters: he gets Mulligans on all that because Hilary would have
been just horrible and we needed to “drain the swamp”.
So what is going on?
I think it’s time to consider the explanation that Trump
has become the object of a cult of personality, crucially abetted by mass media
including Fox, Breitbart News and the rest of the massive and powerful right-wing
media. They portray him as always right, even when he contradicts himself, and worthy of a kind of worship. Cults
of personality need not be religious. There are secular versions, but the leader is
similarly the object of adoration even though he (and it has always been a “he”
according to those who have studied the subject) is not religious at all.-->
Am I going too far in saying Trump's followers “worship” him? I don’t think so. When Democrats failed to applaud
his State of the Union address, Trump had the gall to call it treason. This prompted Frank Bruni to write in the
Feb. 7 New York Times that Trump’s “test of patriotism is this and only this: Do you
worship me?”
-->
We think of cults of
personality as applying to dead leaders, most of them tyrants like Mussolini, Hitler,
Stalin and Ferdinand Marcos of the Phillipines. Some were more benevolent
figures like Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, who secularized the nation of Turkey and
created a democratic Turkish Republic. And, perhaps, to Vladimir Putin, so admired by Trump.
Trump’s cult of personality
has not reached the level of any of these dictators, although Mike
Lofgren, in the January 17, 2018 Washington Monthly, said, “The over-the-top image of
Trump …is eerily similar to the cult of Joseph Stalin.” Thankfully, Trump has not been able to become a Joseph
Stalin because we still do have independent, truth-telling media, and because
defenders of our freedom are leaning heavily on the judicial branch of our
government to prevent Trump from becoming a dictator.
But it’s not for lack of
trying on his part, as we know from his firing of James Comey and his desire to fire Mueller. As psychologists have publicly pointed out, Trump is a
classic narcissist, and narcissists share many characteristics with cult
leaders: It’s always us versus them.
Outsiders are dangerous enemies, and this justifies extreme actions, like
barring all Muslims from coming to the U.S. Cult leaders answer to no one
because they possess special wisdom, and their followers willingly see no evil,
no matter what they do--even cozying up to Russia--as long as the cult leader is pursuing the goals they
share with him, like ending abortion or cutting taxes on the rich. Even if the behavior violates prevailing
standards for ethics and honesty, the cult followers don’t mind how many
mulligans they give.
Because the cult leader is
never wrong, there’s never a need to apologize, to the widow of a dead service
member or his own wife, or so Melania’s behavior seems to be telling us.
Questioning or criticizing the leader is punished, no matter how close the
critic was before. Think Steve Bannon.
And so on, as detailed by Phd
Dan Neuharth in his Psychcentral blog.
Is there a cult of
personality around Donald Trump? No other explanation fits the unshakeable
loyalty of his followers. They hear no evil and see no evil no matter what he says or does, no matter how cruel or how selfish. And if he gets the military parade in Washington D.C.
that he’s asked for, his full-blown narcissism will be there for all to see,
with his followers swooning in worship.##
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
