<i>[somber music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>PATRICIA: The first experience actually was when I was very young.</i> <i>I was the middle child.</i> <i>I really became kind of caretaker for the younger ones.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>When we would wash the babies,</i> <i>it would happen in the kitchen.</i> <i>You know, it’s almost like the altar.</i> <i>Then I got to help with drying and then powdering,</i> <i>‘cause how much damage can you do with powdering?</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>The smell actually drew me to it when I started using powder.</i> <i>I usually used it in the evening</i> <i>after my bath and before I would go to bed.</i> <i>It just made your body feel silkier and smooth,</i> <i>you know, something that made you feel good.</i> <i>TIFFANY: Is it fair to say that Johnson & Johnson was a brand that you trusted?</i> <i>PATRICIA: Yes.</i> <i>Hell, they told us to.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> It was such a big lie. <i>[droning music]</i> <i>[pensive electronic music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>[film reel whirring]</i> <i>[solemn music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>It was April of last year</i> <i>that, you know, I went and said, you know,</i> <i>“Something’s just going on that’s not right.”</i> Did the X-rays, and, um, she said, “It’s not pneumonia, but I see something.” And so she actually said at that time that she thought I had cancer. I was hopeful beyond all hopeful that there’s some other little organ someplace that could just be removed, that that’s where it was. I was relatively young and female, so I wasn’t the typical candidate for mesothelioma. <i>TIFFANY: Patricia Schmitz is a former schoolteacher,</i> <i>but her cancer is usually found in construction crews,</i> <i>shipyard workers, and coalminers.</i> <i>Mesothelioma typically starts</i> <i>in the lining of the lungs and abdomen,</i> <i>spreads quickly, and is almost always fatal.</i> <i>And Pat now believes it was caused by something</i> <i>she used and trusted most of her life:</i> <i>baby powder.</i> <i>PATRICIA: It’s baby powder. It’s made for babies.</i> <i>It’s supposed to make them feel good and safe.</i> There’s definitely a chunk of me that was angry. It seemed like if there was something I could do, I kinda needed to do it. <i>TIFFANY: What Pat felt she needed to do was to sue</i> <i>one of America’s largest and best-known companies, Johnson & Johnson.</i> <i>[quirky music]</i> <i>Her case is among a growing number of lawsuits, around 15,000,</i> <i>that hinge on a vital question:</i> <i>does baby powder cause cancer?</i> <i>[dramatic music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>As business and health reporters, we’re following the cases.</i> <i>So far, the verdicts are split,</i> <i>and Johnson & Johnson continues to aggressively fight the accusations.</i> <i>CHILD: What’s that stuff?</i> <i>MOTHER: Johnson’s Baby Powder.</i> <i>I put it on her after a bath.</i> <i>I put Johnson’s all over her.</i> <i>Fragile.</i> <i>Handle with Johnson’s.</i> <i>TIFFANY: For more than a century,</i> <i>Johnson & Johnson has promoted its baby powder</i> <i>as gentle enough for a newborn’s bottom.</i> <i>It’s made from talc mined from the earth</i> <i>and that distinctive fragrance,</i> <i>the smell of innocence.</i> <i>Could a product marketed as the essence of purity</i> <i>be making people sick?</i> <i>[solemn music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>GPS: Slight right for Texas 8 Beltway East,</i> <i>then slight right onto Texas 8 Beltway East.</i> RONI: I was really skeptical. I thought, like, “What are they gonna come up with next, like baby powder and cancer?” <i>TIFFANY: Months before Pat Schmitz’s trial,</i> <i>a wealthy lawyer’s record-setting $4.6 billion win</i> <i>against Johnson & Johnson caught our attention.</i> <i>RONI: He had a new angle on this.</i> <i>His take was, this stuff was contaminated with asbestos,</i> and that—that sort of was the missing piece for me. MARK: I had handled enough talc cases before to know that there has historically been asbestos within the talc mines. I liken it to a steak and the way fat is marbled into a steak. You can get a low-fat steak, but it’s still gonna have some fat in it. That fat is just built into the meat. And in the same way, asbestos is built into talc mines. <i>TIFFANY: Mark Lanier has a flair for stories,</i> <i>and last year, he built a case around 22 of them.</i> MARK: Stephanie Martin, Olga Salazar, Toni Roberts... <i>TIFFANY: All alleging in a lawsuit that Johnson’s Baby Powder</i> <i>caused them to develop ovarian cancer.</i> MARK: With all of our women, we asked them, “Did you use Johnson & Johnson talcum baby powder?” And all of them said yes. And so who’s to say that the asbestos isn’t present in the baby powder? <i>TIFFANY: But Lanier had to convince a jury of his theory.</i> MARK: Would y’all do me favor? Bring me some of the boxes of my top documents. <i>[pensive music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> And while you’re at it, guys, get me the demonstratives that we use to explain this to a jury, please. Just pile it up on the—the table. <i>TIFFANY: His big break came when he won access to the company’s internal files,</i> <i>including documents the public had never seen before.</i> <i>MARK: We’ve got millions of pages of documents.</i> RONI: Did—did they bombard you? MARK: Oh, yeah, yeah. The easiest place to hide a leaf is in a forest. <i>TIFFANY: Buried in the reams of Johnson & Johnson documents</i> <i>were the results of tests that, according to Lanier,</i> <i>had found small amounts of asbestos in the company’s talc.</i> MARK: Can you find for me, please, Mildred, the document from the Colorado School of Mines? Thank you. Here it is. This is a procedure to examine talc for the presence of chrysotile and tremolite, actinolite fibers. Chrysotile is asbestos. Tremolite is asbestos. <i>TIFFANY: Lanier said his own tests had similar findings.</i> MARK: These are the asbestos fibers that we found not only in the tissue of our women, but these are the asbestos fibers that we found in the product, in Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder. <i>TIFFANY: But when the case went to trial,</i> <i>Johnson & Johnson challenged his tests</i> <i>and presented other studies stating that its baby powder was free of asbestos.</i> <i>Lanier countered by saying that those studies were flawed.</i> <i>MARK: If you do the right test, you’ll know!</i> You do the right test, you do it often, and you report it honestly. <i>TIFFANY: He told the jury that it was like designing a test</i> <i>to find an asbestos needle or to not find it.</i> - So this a bathroom scale, okay? Asbestos are needles, so the question is, is there a needle? Well, not according to this scale. But you can take one needle and put it on the jeweler’s scale, and you see it’s 0.076 grams. What they did is, they used a scale that they knew wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up the asbestos needles. And if you get a sensitive scale, it will show the needles time after time after time again. RONI: Johnson & Johnson says that very few people have the expertise to really test this properly. They say a lot of people get it wrong. - The last thing in the world Johnson & Johnson’s ever gonna do is say, “Oh, jeez, you’re right. “Our flagship product that engenders trust in so many people, “the product that’s gone in hundreds of millions of people’s lungs in America, “has asbestos in it. “And, oh, by the way, did we tell you we’ve known that for decades and ignored it?” <i>[pensive music]</i> <i>MIKE: In order to make a finding in favor of Miss Olson in this case,</i> <i>you’ve got to come to the conclusion that a bottle used by Miss Olson</i> <i>had asbestos in it</i> and enough asbestos to cause mesothelioma. <i>TIFFANY: Johnson & Johnson strongly denies any link</i> <i>between their signature product and cancer.</i> <i>In courts across the country,</i> <i>a small army of lawyers are engaged in a legal battle over intricate science.</i> MIKE: The plaintiff’s allegation in this case is that Johnson & Johnson set up a test protocol that was designed not to find asbestos. To the people at Johnson & Johnson, that is a very serious allegation. <i>TIFFANY: Johnson & Johnson argues that lawyers for the plaintiffs</i> <i>are just looking for another big payday,</i> <i>that they are cherry-picking evidence and presenting junk science.</i> MIKE: The point is, there is no asbestos in the baby powder. Therefore, it’s an appropriate product to be on the market. <i>TIFFANY: And they attack the credibility of expert witnesses.</i> ARTHUR: As the title says, “What’s the big deal about asbestos?” <i>TIFFANY: Dr. Arthur Frank is an asbestos expert...</i> - It’s nasty stuff. <i>TIFFANY: Who has testified</i> <i>for plaintiffs in several baby powder cases.</i> <i>ARTHUR: The problem with doing testing,</i> <i>and J&J has come out and said, “We’ve had our stuff tested.”</i> There is no standardized test to look for this material. And there’s no agency that mandates standardized testing. - But isn’t that an enormous point of contention? You got one side saying, “We’re totally finding asbestos,” and the other side is saying, “We’re totally not finding asbestos.” And both sides are saying, “We’re using the top technology available.” ARTHUR: No. But one lab is not using the top technology. They’re using their technology. There are ways to run your laboratories so that it is more likely or less likely to find if it’s really there. <i>[curious music]</i> <i>TIFFANY: What is established and not debated?</i> <i>ARTHUR: There is no question that asbestos is toxic.</i> <i>One day of exposure is sufficient to give people mesotheliomas.</i> <i>It doesn’t matter what the source of the exposure is.</i> It matters if you’re exposed to asbestos. <i>JOE: Could you please state your full name and spell it for the record?</i> <i>PATRICIA: Patricia Alice Schmitz.</i> <i>P-A-T-R-I-C-I-A S-C-H-M-I-T-Z.</i> JOE: Pat, have you ever done this before? - No, I have not. JOE: You a little nervous? - Yeah, I guess I am. <i>TIFFANY: Joe Satterley is Pat Schmitz’s lawyer.</i> <i>He took her case as the suits against Johnson & Johnson were multiplying.</i> <i>JOE: Physically, she’s lost a lot of weight, 60, 70 pounds.</i> You just don’t recognize her. It’s not like it’s the same person. Let me show you some pictures. <i>Is that you? PATRICIA: That’s me.</i> <i>JOE: And where are you then?</i> <i>PATRICIA: That’s the fifth grade classroom at St. Augustine.</i> <i>JOE: Why did you want to be a teacher?</i> <i>PATRICIA: I was always drawn to taking care of kids.</i> <i>So it’s kind of—it was a fit.</i> <i>It was what I was supposed to do.</i> JOE: You adopted two children, right, twins? - Twins, yes. JOE: And what are their names? - Robert and Ashley. <i>JOE: Is that you, Robert, and Ashley?</i> <i>PATRICIA: Yes.</i> TIFFANY: How did you and she zone in on the Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder? JOE: We do a detailed exploration on what the person’s exposed to. She was a schoolteacher and never worked in any setting that exposed her to asbestos in any way. But from 1957 until the mid-2000s, she was exposed to body powder and baby powder. - I used body powder after every bath or shower. <i>Baby powder or the body powder served the purpose of not chafing.</i> <i>JOE: How did you apply it?</i> - Sometimes I applied it to my hand and would apply it to my body. <i>TIFFANY: As the lawsuits piled up,</i> <i>judges compelled Johnson & Johnson to turn over more documents.</i> <i>Satterley says these were dotted with concerns about asbestos.</i> <i>JOE: They had knowledge of this</i> all the way back into the 1950s. That’s May ‘58. Here’s another one here, July ‘59. These are tests showing asbestos in their product. <i>TIFFANY: The documents refer to internal concerns.</i> <i>“It would seem more than appropriate</i> <i>“that we upgrade the quality control on our talc and baby powder,</i> <i>particularly as to the potential asbestos content.”</i> <i>To company executives knowing the risks:</i> <i>“It is not inconceivable that we could become involved in litigation.”</i> <i>And to discussions going back more than 40 years about an alternative to talc:</i> <i>“Cornstarch is obviously another answer.</i> <i>The product by its very nature does not contain fibers.”</i> - Where does that leave us? It leaves us with asbestos in baby powder, it leaves us with asbestos in the mines, asbestos in the mills, and it leaves us with a company that doesn’t tell the truth. <i>TIFFANY: Mark Lanier told the jury that, for decades,</i> <i>the company feared asbestos contamination and did nothing.</i> - All of this evidence put together tells a chilling story. The company knew about the presence of the asbestos. The company deliberately worked a number of tests to try to cover their tracks of knowing it’s there while they’re selling it. <i>RONI: Why are they defending this now so vigorously?</i> - Money, money, money, money. RONI: Why not just settle? Why not just settle, put this behind them? - Because there are way too many cases. <i>NEWS REPORTER: Talcum powder causing cancer.</i> <i>NEWS REPORTER: J&J knew for decades about asbestos in baby powder.</i> <i>TIFFANY: As scrutiny intensified,</i> <i>Johnson & Johnson continued to defend its baby powder as pure and safe.</i> - We unequivocally believe that our talc, our baby powder, does not contain asbestos. <i>TIFFANY: We invited the company to address the allegations.</i> RONI: Johnson & Johnson’s CEO, Alex Gorsky, has been very outspoken about baby powder. He says baby powder is safe. He says it has never contained asbestos. Why wouldn’t he speak with us today? - Well, as you can imagine, any time that anyone speaks on behalf of Johnson & Johnson, they find themselves subpoenaed. Mr. Gorsky can’t spend all of his time doing that, and so they sent me. <i>[calm music]</i> <i>RONI: Do you and Johnson & Johnson agree that asbestos</i> is a cancer-causing agent in humans, even in trace amounts? - Well, asbestos can definitely cause cancer. There’s no question about it. It’s been associated with mesothelioma. The relevant question for purposes of Johnson’s Baby Powder, the product that my client makes, is whether talcum powder is associated with the cancers that the plaintiff’s lawyers are accusing us of being associated with. There the science just simply isn’t there. - Does Johnson & Johnson talcum powder contain asbestos? - It does not, and that’s not just Bart Williams saying that. That’s MIT, Harvard University, Dartmouth, the Colorado School of Mines, uh, Cardiff University in Wales, the FDA. <i>TIFFANY: But the full story doesn’t totally support Williams’ assertion.</i> <i>The Harvard study said a sample of source talc mines were clean,</i> <i>but other tests found asbestos around the same time.</i> <i>And scientists from MIT, Dartmouth,</i> <i>and other schools were doing private work for Johnson & Johnson.</i> - I just want to be clear that you’re saying it has never contained any asbestos, not even traces of asbestos, and to this day, it does not contain asbestos. - What I’m saying is that the testing that has been done over the course of 50 years has demonstrated that there is not asbestos in the talc in any sort of an amount that would cause any harm to a human being. RONI: In February 1964, an internal memo talked about the need to immediately develop a cornstarch version of talcum powder. August 9, 1971, a short, brief memo: “We must upgrade the quality control on our talc, particularly as to the potential asbestos content.” Seems to be a lot of concern... BART: I can respond to that. RONI: Within the company about possible asbestos content. - Oh, you bet. Look, there is no question that if there were any kind of a sense within the company that the product actually contains asbestos, the company wouldn’t sell it. The fact that they were concerned about that— RONI: But there was concern in the company. - Right, and so they look into it. That’s how science works, Roni. RONI: And in 1971, there was a specific, specific memo saying, “We’re concerned about the potential asbestos content and yet nothing”— - Let me ask you this, Roni. Should the company not be concerned about that? RONI: Why market a product for years as pure, safe, good for babies, good for mothers, when there is even a shadow of a doubt, even a shadow of a doubt, about a highly toxic carcinogenic substance? - Because there isn’t a doubt about whether or not it’s safe. If there were evidence that established that it is unsafe, it would not be sold. It’s that simple. <i>TIFFANY: Today, Johnson & Johnson is under attack on several fronts,</i> <i>but the baby powder lawsuits pose a particular threat</i> <i>to the $300 billion conglomerate,</i> <i>namely to its reputation.</i> DAVID: In sales dollars, this is not a very big part of Johnson & Johnson. It’s tiny. But in terms of reputation, in terms of trust, in terms of the consumer relationship, this is sort of one of the cornerstones of the entire company. <i>TIFFANY: David Vinjamuri was a brand manager</i> <i>at Johnson & Johnson in the 1990s.</i> TIFFANY: So what’s your take on why J&J isn’t settling most of these cases? They settled a handful, but for the most part, they’re fighting. - There is a reservoir of trust that J&J has with consumers that still exists, but at some point, it will run out. If you lose baby, you know, you lose the company. <i>[inquisitive music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>RONI: As questions about the safety of baby powder</i> <i>continue to swirl in labs and courtrooms,</i> <i>a basic question emerges:</i> <i>“Where’s the government been in all of this?”</i> <i>The answer takes us back to the 1970s,</i> <i>when concerns about asbestos led to the testing of consumer products,</i> <i>including baby powder.</i> “Doesn’t contain asbestos.” <i>I went to Israel to meet a scientist who remembers what he found.</i> AVIAM: We went to the Statue of Liberty, went to the beach. <i>RONI: Aviam Elkies moved to New York City in the early 1970s</i> <i>to study under a well-regarded chemist</i> <i>at New York University, Seymour Lewin.</i> AVIAM: Some pictures, already you can see nothing. RONI: Little faded, yeah. AVIAM: 50 years is a long time. <i>RONI: Elkies says he worked on a project</i> <i>funded by Johnson & Johnson analyzing talc from mines</i> <i>that he said were supplying the company.</i> And what did you find? RONI: Could you be wrong about that? <i>According to Elkies,</i> <i>Johnson & Johnson yanked his scholarship money</i> <i>and terminated the project after learning about the results.</i> So you made their life complicated? <i>TIFFANY: A lawyer for Johnson & Johnson</i> <i>said he was not aware of any evidence that</i> <i>Mr. Elkies had a scholarship from the company.</i> <i>The project’s lead researcher, Seymour Lewin, is dead,</i> <i>but Johnson & Johnson’s own documents reveal what happened to the project.</i> <i>In the 1970s, Lewin continued testing top products</i> <i>for the Food and Drug Administration.</i> <i>His initial results showed asbestos in Johnson & Johnson’s product,</i> <i>a report that found its way to the company, and the company responded.</i> <i>It convened a group of scientists who attacked Lewin’s credibility,</i> <i>saying he was “outside his field of competence.”</i> <i>It extracted a promise from an FDA official</i> <i>that the original report “would be released over his dead body.”</i> <i>And it sent one of its hired scientists to visit Lewin.</i> <i>When the final report came back,</i> <i>it was clean.</i> <i>In the end, the FDA decided to stay on the sidelines,</i> <i>choosing to allow the cosmetics industry to regulate itself,</i> <i>an arrangement that continues today.</i> <i>The agency says they take the possible presence of asbestos</i> <i>in cosmetics seriously, but they do not routinely test products,</i> <i>only when there are complaints.</i> <i>And just this year, they announced</i> <i>asbestos had been found in several makeup products.</i> <i>ARTHUR: We all, as a society,</i> think the government is there as our protectors, that they oversee us and they protect us. And it turns out that that’s very much a fallacy. <i>TIFFANY: Asbestos, the known carcinogen,</i> <i>is banned in more than 60 countries but not in the U.S.</i> <i>ARTHUR: It reminds me of all of these other cases.</i> <i>Reminds me of lead in paint.</i> <i>It reminds me of cigarette smoking.</i> There’s all of these situations of exposures to commercial products that you and I can go to the store and buy that are indeed hazardous. <i>TIFFANY: With no scientific certainty</i> <i>and very little government oversight,</i> <i>the question remains:</i> <i>how can we know whether baby powder is safe?</i> <i>Until there’s certainty,</i> <i>plaintiffs say there’s something the company could do.</i> <i>JOE: Now with regards to Johnson’s baby powder,</i> had they placed a warning on it that said that breathing this dust from this powder may increase your risk of developing cancer, would you use that product? - No, I would not. <i>JOE: A warning, quite frankly, is not enough.</i> <i>But a warning is the bare minimum.</i> And under the law, a company that makes a dangerous product has an obligation to warn, to give the consumer the choice to try to protect themselves. <i>TIFFANY: When we last saw Pat, she was waiting on two things:</i> <i>an uncertain verdict and a nearly certain future.</i> Why did it become so important to you to spend what might not be very long going after this company? PATRICIA: A big chunk of it was that I felt it needed to be done. You know, it’s a system that just is so wrong. And until some people start raising some stink and until it costs the companies and ‘cause if there’s isn’t a consequence, nothing will change. <i>[ethereal music]</i> <i>JUDGE: I am told that we have a—a verdict.</i> <i>The verdict reads as follows:</i> <i>“Was the defendant’s negligence a substantial factor</i> <i>in contributing to Patricia Schmitz’s risk of developing mesothelioma?”</i> <i>Johnson & Johnson, yes, 11. No, 1.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i>