Bribes and recalls

Johnson & Johnson has the perfect nickname: Two crooked letters, J&J.

Even the "&" is crooked -- and I can't think of anything more fitting, since the company has just settled charges that its executives used bribes and kickbacks to win overseas contracts.

The feds say J&J's in-house crooks used those bribes to sell implants in Greece and prescriptions in Romania, and to win contracts in Poland.

The feds also say the company paid kickbacks to win 19 contracts in Iraq under the United Nations' infamous "oil for food" scheme.

Naturally, the penalty doesn't come close to matching the crime: The company will pay $70 million, which is probably chump change compared to what those bribes and kickbacks earned.

Of course, this isn't the only problem facing J&J -- and it's not even the biggest one. I've told you about the horrendous and inexcusable recalls, from faulty hip implants to children's meds manufactured in the filthiest stinkhole you've ever seen.

As I told you last year, it took the feds 17 pages to list all the problems (including bacterial contamination) in the raw materials at the Pennsylvania plant where those drugs were made. (Read the full story here.)

Serious problems at a J&J plant in Puerto Rico also led to a series of recalls of adult meds, including Benadryl and Tylenol. And as I write this, the company is issuing yet another recall -- this time for Topamax, an epilepsy med made at the Puerto Rico plant.

It's so bad that the FDA has actually sent in its own supervisors to oversee operations at the plants... but don't take any comfort in that. If there's a group with as bad a track record as Johnson & Johnson, it's the gang that couldn't shoot straight over at the FDA.

If I were you, I'd just avoid everything from J&J -- from Tylenol right on down to Band-Aids.

Sticking it to the Band-Aid bandits,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.