Band-Aids and corporate graft

Baby shampoo. Band-Aids. Bottles of talcum powder in nurseries across America. The Johnson & Johnson logo—smooth curves and calming red script—seemed for decades more like a family signature than a corporate brand. If ever a company appeared to embody innocence, it was Johnson & Johnson.

But appearances can be dangerously deceptive.

Gardiner Harris’ new book, No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson (Random House, 464 pp.), relentlessly dismantles that carefully polished image. Harris, a seasoned public health reporter for The New York Times and formerly of The Wall Street Journal, brings decades of investigative experience to bear on one of America's most revered corporations. What he uncovers is nothing short of staggering.

Built over five years of research and drawing from tens of thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews, No More Tears moves deliberately through Johnson & Johnson’s history, chipping away at each layer of myth. It begins with an uncomfortable but necessary truth: For all the sentimental branding, Johnson & Johnson, like any corporation, is primarily a machine for profit—and often a ruthless one.

As Harris writes early in the book, the company was adept at building an “unmatched level of trust, an emotional bond so strong that consumers would possibly overlook any missteps, no matter how serious they might be.” Internally, this emotional branding served another purpose: creating moral immunity within the company itself. Employees genuinely believed they worked for one of the most ethical organizations in the world. This belief gave cover to indefensible acts.

From talc products contaminated with asbestos to aggressive, misleading marketing of drugs like Risperdal and the opioid patch Duragesic, Harris shows that Johnson & Johnson’s failures were not isolated mistakes but systemic.

The book excels in its first half, where Harris methodically tracks the origins of Johnson & Johnson’s emotional grip on America. The company did much more than market products; it sold feelings. Baby powder wasn’t merely a cosmetic product; it was a ritual of love and trust, an integral part of the American childhood. “The association of the Johnson’s name with both the mother-infant bond and mother’s touch,” Harris writes, “is known as Johnson & Johnson’s Golden Egg.”

This strategy worked so well that, even after repeated scandals, the brand's public image remained largely intact. Harris contrasts the company's saintly public narrative, built around events like the heroic 1982 Tylenol recall, with the harsher reality behind the scenes.

The book excels in several key ways. Harris’ research is exhaustive, with every claim backed by documents, grand jury records, or firsthand accounts. But he also never loses sight of the human cost. Instead of focusing solely on courtrooms and settlements, he delivers the stories of children harmed by Risperdal, cancer victims exposed to contaminated talc, and patients crippled by faulty hip implants. This human dimension gives the book its edge, making it eminently readable. Harris’ clear, powerful writing resists the lure of industry jargon and instead lets the devastating facts speak plainly. Finally, Harris shows balanced judgment throughout. Although the book is deeply critical, it acknowledges Johnson & Johnson’s genuine contributions to medicine and healthcare, making the story more complex and credible rather than reducing it to a simple villain narrative.

Still, No More Tears is not without fault. At times, particularly in the sections focused on drug marketing, Harris circles back to examples he has already thoroughly covered, sapping narrative momentum. Another minor limitation is the heavy focus on American regulatory failures. While entirely justified, this focus leaves readers curious about Johnson & Johnson’s global operations, especially given their international scale and influence. Additionally, while Harris offers glimpses into internal dissent within the company, a deeper exploration of whistleblowers or conflicted insiders—those who struggled but stayed silent or tried to resist—would have added another valuable dimension to the portrait.

By the time you finish No More Tears, the image of Johnson & Johnson as a benevolent giant has been thoroughly dismantled. In its place stands something much more complex and significantly more unsettling: a company that has mastered the science of medicine and learned to weaponize the subtler science of public trust.

Ostensibly, this is a corporate exposé. In reality, it's an autopsy of American corporate mythology.

Credit goes to Harris for doing something amazingly rare. He has taken a household name, a brand steeped in sentimentality, and stripped it down to its bare bones. No More Tears demands a reckoning—both with Johnson & Johnson and with how we, as consumers and citizens, allow ourselves to be lulled by disingenuous narratives.

In the end, Harris leaves us with a simple, devastating insight: “The vast disconnect between the mythology and reality of Johnson & Johnson should cast doubt on common fairy tales about the equity and rightness of the American systems of healthcare, government, and economy.”

It’s a conclusion that lingers long after the final page.