As recall after recall appears in the news, it becomes clear Johnson & Johnson cares more about sales than safety.

Johnson & Johnson's slogans over the years have assured consumers, particularly mothers, that their products are - above all else - safe. However, a recent, seemingly endless stream of recalls suggests otherwise.

Children's Tylenol, Motrin Infant Drops, and Children's Benadryl are among the many medications recalled this year for manufacturing and labeling issues. Those products join recalls of Acuvue contact lenses, the allergy medication Zyrtec, and the ASR hip implant, which was sold to approximately 93,000 adults needing hip replacement surgery. A consistent pattern emerges: the company recalls products only as a last resort, and its quality controls seem to allow an inordinate number of dangerous products to reach the market - and enter the bodies of consumers.

J&J may once have cared that its products were safe. Now, it appears the company only cares if they're sold. The company consistently sells products long after it is fully aware that the products present a danger to the public.

And the FDA is helping.

Silent Recalls

In a report by ABC News, an inventory company employee named Lynn Walther tells reporters that J&J hired him to quietly purchase specific lots of Motrin IB. His instructions stated that he should, "simply act like a regular customer while making these purchases. There must be no mention of this being a recall of the product. Run in, find the product, make your purchase and run out."

Johnson & Johnson's Head of Consumer Affairs, Colleen Goggins, stated that the company had nothing to do with the buy-back, and that she didn't "believe there was any intent to mislead or hide anything." It's difficult to believe the now-retired Goggins, considering J&J has a long history of "phantom" or "silent" recalls.

In 2007, the Australia joint registry sent seven separate reports to the company identifying specific problems with the ASR device and detailing the high failure rate. The device was withdrawn for "commercial reasons" in December of 2009 and only officially recalled in March of 2010. Meanwhile, thousands of people received an implant that may cause permanent tissue and bone damage or require a revision, which could mean they will be unable to have a successful future implant.

Other recalls show a similar pattern of attempting to minimize the amount of product recalled - or avoid a recall altogether. Where one might hope that a company would issue a recall as rapidly as possible after being informed of problems, J&J's usual response is to "wait and see", followed by an attempt to remove the product by some other means than a recall. If it does recall the product, the company issues the smallest recall possible, expanding by minute degrees to keep products on the shelves as long as possible.

Hundreds of wrongful death claims were issued over the Duragesic pain-killing patch. The jury determined that J&J was aware of the defects in the Duragestic patches, but neglected to inform doctors and consumers. the company recalled the patch that administered a 75mg/hour dose in 2004 - and waited until 2008 to recall the same patch that administered a 25mg/hour dose.

In Japan, J&J expanded a recall of its Acuvue TruEye lenses five times, from the initial 100,000 boxes to half a million. The expanded recall was only announced in Japan. At the time of the recall notice, J&J rather cavalierly noted that the recall represented less than 1% of all contact lenses made by the company worldwide.

This fact is surely a great comfort to the 500,000 people who put acidic lenses in their eyes. We're surprised a similar statement was not made about the Duragesic pain-killing patches; surely the hundreds of people who died represented only a small - negligible, really - fraction of the product consumed worldwide.

When it comes to consumer safety, though, Johnson & Johnson would almost always prefer to look at the numbers than the people.

Fine Print in Invisible Ink

Johnson & Johnson has been reprimanded, and occasionally sued, repeatedly over the last ten years for not giving their customers adequate warning about the risks of their products. Many jokes are made about reading the fine print - but the fine print can be rather difficult to read if the warnings simply aren't put on the labels at all. Read more ...