No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson

On March 10th, 2021, J&J CEO Alex Gorsky attended an event with President Biden and Merck CEO Ken Frazier to celebrate the companies’ contributions to the development of a “one shot” Covid vaccine. The event was not held at the vaccine manufacturing facility in Baltimore, Emergent BioSolutions, because The New York Times had recently reported on its “history of shady contracting practices” (314).

In 2019, J&J was facing a backlash over the Baby Powder, pelvic mesh, Risperdal, and other lawsuits over its products. Seeking to improve its public image, it decided to develop a Covid vaccine. J&J worked with Dr. Dan Barouch at the Harvard-affiliated hospital Beth Israel to develop a Covid vaccine. Barouch had developed a technique for placing “the genetic code for the disease he was fighting” within a cold virus (“an adenovirus”) (321) to create a weakened version of the disease the body could then develop antibodies to. He had used this technique to create a vaccine for Zika virus in 2016. Barouch’s Covid vaccine was 65% effective at preventing Covid—lower than the vaccines of competitors, but more convenient as it was a one-shot regime and did not require refrigeration.