Phamalot: Johnson & Johnson And Its Mystery Shoppers

Pharmalot, Ed Silverman’s excellent pharmaceutical insider blog posted a riveting blog on the continued saga of the truth behind Johnson & Johnson's recent recalls of its hugely popular over-the-counter brands which included Motrin and Tylenol.

Currently the industry giant finds itself in embroiled in Congressional investigations and regulatory review from the FDA which may involve criminal charges.

Here are some of the highlights from the Pharmalot blog:

· The Johnson & Johnson recall scandal is threatening to envelope the healthcare giant in ways that, just a few months ago, no one could imagine. The latest twist involves a series of emails that appear to lend further credence to what a Congressional committee is calling a ‘phantom recall,’ which was allegedly undertaken to obscure serious problems with widely used over-the-counter pediatric medications. The episode is part of a long-running chain of events may prompt the FDA to consider criminal charges.

· At issue are quality-control failures that forced J&J to recently recall tens of millions of bottles of such venerable brands as Tylenol and Motrin, among others, which had been found to contain too much active ingredient or metallic specks. But instead of issuing a recall, J&J hired an outside contractor to buy Motrin from stores, and its employees were instructed to act like “regular customers” and not discuss a possible recall. This was disclosed at a May 27 Congressional hearing.

· Since then, internal J&J documents obtained by Pharmalot would appear to undercut some of J&J’s contentions, such as the notion that its contractor’s assignment was limited and transparent. A J&J spokeswoman told The New York Times the contractor’s memo was created without the knowledge of its McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit. But e-mails suggest J&J employees were aware, including Lily Vandermolen, an associate product director at McNeil, and Carolyn Parziale, a diretor of quality assurance at McNeil.

Mr. Silverman’s blog goes into detail about Johnson & Johnson’s insider knowledge and it would surely mean that there are many documents that leave a trail to an institutional knowledge of the product out in the supply chain was well known to have quality issues and be potentially harmful to the consumer.

Secure Pharma Chain Blog endorses that all members of the pharmaceutical supply chain deploy technologies and solutions to actively verify the authenticity and quality of its inventories to protect themselves and the consumers from poor quality control, adulteration, fraud and counterfeit product.

To learn more about authentication technologies that can verify pharmaceutical products inside their sealed unit-of-sale container, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.

To read the entire Pharmalot blog, visit: http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/06/johnson-johnson-and-its-mystery-shoppers/#more-23843.