This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
JNJ Gets “Nailed”, Again
Near As I can tell, everyone loves JNJ. Guys like Cramer think it's the stock for the second half of the year. Maybe. My problem with the company is execution. It seems that they are constantly recalling one product or the other. Now they have to do another recall. This time it is for nails that they sell.
JNJ bought Synthes for a very pricy $19.7Bn back in June (the deal was announced in April 2011). The deep thinkers at JNJ were willing to pay this monster tab knowing full well that Synthes had a problem.
Synthes was a Swiss company that had a fantastic reputation for special medical devices. The company’s focus was on trauma. When bones break, Synthes has a product to help a patient.
In 2001 Synthes developed a “glue” that was supposed to help patients who had suffered a fractured vertebrae. Rather then screwing or nailing a broken bone, the idea was to use glue. That didn’t work out at all. People died. There are ongoing lawsuits. The bad news for JNJ is that the story was made (very) public with this article a month ago (Link). Some of the juicy lines from the article:
Department of Health and Human Services agents told her that the government had come across new information about her mother's death. Her 83-year-old mother, had unexpectedly died during spine surgery.
The agent told her that the surgeon had injected bone cement into her mother's spine and that the product -- which was not approved for that use -- may have played a role in her death.
The agent explained that the government had filed criminal charges against the maker of the cement, a company called Synthes, and four of its executives.
In 2009 the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia accused the company of running illegal clinical trials -- essentially, experimenting on humans.
The Food and Drug Administration explicitly told Synthes not to promote Norian (glue) for certain spine surgeries, but the company pushed forward anyway.
Synthes denied patients the right to choose whether they wanted to be test subjects.
The assistant U.S. attorney who led the prosecution, urged the court to send the executives to jail for their "venal crime." The "callous disregard of patient safety warrants the highest sentence the law will allow."
When Norian was injected into the bloodstream of a pig, "the entire pulmonary artery system had clotted off."
A surgeon was operating on an 83-year-old prize-winning physicist. Shortly after injecting him with (glue) the patient's blood pressure sank. The doctor couldn't resuscitate him, and he died on the table.
Again, the problems with Sythes' bad glue was 10 years before JNJ wrote the big check. The brass at JNJ “bought” the lawsuits (and the publicity) that has followed. They had to know what was in the offing.
It’s my understanding that Synthes has another headache on its hands. This time surgical nails are the problem.
The company makes screws, plates and other fasteners (all highly machined and made with special steel). It has a product that is widely used in hip repairs. The surgeons who use it refer to it as a “nail”. Nails are very big business for Synthes.
There’s nothing wrong with Synthes' nails. It seems the company has a problem with packaging. The nails are delivered in sterilized containers . Apparently, questions have been raised as to the possibility of a package getting a tear at some point. In an abundance of caution, Synthes is going to replace the existing inventory of nails (most trauma hospitals have these nails in inventory) .
I want to be very clear on this. There is absolutely no suggestion that any nails that have been used in the past were tainted in anyway. No patient has been injured. Period.
This is another JNJ packaging problem. It will be fixed without significant long-term consequence. But then again, this is another JNJ packaging problem.
A Doc I spoke with had this to say about Synthes’ latest gaff:
They’re idiots.
Replacement nails are months away. In the meantime I have to use a competitor’s product.
This is a pain in the ass with the hospital billing office. Changing suppliers for this kind of high volume product does not come easy. It will not be reversed back to Synthes when they get some new nails.
The timing for this is terrible. The article on the glue was widely read. Now they have another problem.
Note:
Most of the apartments in lower Manhattan rely on big tanks on the roof to supply pressurized water. Normally, water is pumped up on a steady basis. These tanks are now all running dry.
A friend who lives near Spring Street, has been without power for days. Yesterday he lost water. NYC’s fire department has been leaving hydrants open at various spots. People who need water have been lining up.
Think of this. Folks are carrying two five gallon buckets up twelve flights of stairs, just so they can take a crap. I would not have thought this was possible anywhere in the Big Apple. Go figure.
- advertisements -






Someone put on a $15Billion short position on JNJ in the summertime, just before the stock moved from 65 to 71. No news on who has the $1.5 Billion loss.
You don't know for sure that there's a loss. For example, the short could be a delta hedge against stock options sold. This could just be 1 leg of a trade.
@ the water problem:
solutions
1. don t flush
2. take a shit on a road or an ally
3. don't take a shit
4. shit on your neighbors doorsteps
Actually, those tanks fill by gravity from upstate sources. If your friends are having water problems, its because their building no longer uses their tank.
A water tank on the roof of a 10+ story building does not fill itself "by gravity" - come on, now!!
It is called 'head' - source above delivery site. I have a 12' tall tank on a flat spot on our ridge (the highest spot on my land) that fills just fine with gravity water 1200' from the tank, and 8' above the spring output (surveyed the line down and back up a hill some 40 years ago). The top of the tank could have been 7' higher and I would still have water. The top input line of my main holding tank up the hill is exactly 3 inches below the output 800+ feet away down and up steep trails - cutting it pretty fine, but it works well and has survived a couple of pretty good earthquakes over the years.
It just does not matter how high the holding tank is, as long as it is an inch below the water source, no matter how far away the source is (given effective routing of the lines so that no part of the line is above the source).
A ten story building is 120 feet or so above sea level in NYC
Upstate reservoirs can easily be 800 feet a.s.l. Get it?
Well, I guess that explains why Uncle Warren dumped the stock.
bruce congrats on picking the giants before the start of the bb season
I didn't bet it. Idiot.....
dupe
The Big Apple is an analogue of the current financial system. It has been pieced together over time with one engineering fix after another to prop too many people too high up into too little space. It's a brittle system that can't tolerate disruption. If things aren't brought to normal soon you will see more and more unexpected consequences. As a possible example the sewers are designed to move solids aided by substantial water flow. You're describing a very bad hydrological situation with the solids now having too little water to move them along. In three weeks they may need to call Roto Rooter in a very big way. They don't make snakes that big. Our financial setup today is just as manipulated and built up, algos, liquidity, multi-party hypothecations, one Cat 1 storm can start a cascading effect.
Winter is coming
DeadFred, excellent analogy ! Thanks.
In three weeks they may need to call Roto Rooter in a very big way.
If memory serves me right, William Banzai is in possession of a Big ass Roto Rooter...and a plan on how to operate it successfully to go with it.
Stay away from the modern sick-care industry; you are their guniea pig, and their ATM.
It's much more likely your in-hospital death from ill-treatment will be the direct or indirect result of centralized decision making, regulations, mandates, red tape and actions undertaken to protect against law suits... not as a casualty of a supervised medical experiment.
Tell that the patients seeking care for spine related injuries and recieving fungal infected filth in their injections. Did "centralized decision-making, regulations, mandates,red tape and actions undertaken to protect against lawsuits" cause their death or was it failure to adhere to the above.
around 500k people die per year from getting adminstered the WRONG medicine. 50% of medical care is paid for by GOV. and you scream about a private industry.
Well, we don't yet know exactly what led to that contamination and I for one wouldn't rule out any other above just yet. But even if it turns out to be cut and dry, private negligence what I said is still true as this kind of thing is actually pretty rare and this meningitis outbreak in particular is not the result of some experiment.
Many groundbreaking medical advances of the 20th century were made via just this kind of trial and error. It sucks if it’s your grandma who died from toxic spinal glue but that’s the trade-off.
Many if not most experimental, cutting edge therapies now happen outside the US where regulations are more lax. The origins of the subsequent articles in the table of contents of the top medical journals seem to support that.
The tremendous medical science advances made while treating burn victims of the Cocoanut Grove Fire, for instance, where doctors were just about making it up as they went along, would never happen today. In India maybe but not here.
Think of this. Folks are carrying two five gallon buckets up twelve flights of stairs, just so they can take a crap. I would not have thought this was possible anywhere in the Big Apple. Go figure.
These unfortunate people, I feel for them. Our Gubmnt needs to spend on infrastructure and not pensions and automatic cost of living raises for the crooks that bailed out the banks - and the top 0.01% can pony up some of their illigitmate swag as well. I am ready to rumble
Only a taste of what's in store for the Big Apple and the criminal class in DC. Get out while you can.
Cry to your mommy.
Why not hook up a couple of fire hoses end-to-end and run it from the hydrant to the top of the building? Would seem to be a lot easier, and if there's enough pressure at the hydrant, a fast fill; two portable radios, at street and rooftop, and spills should be small.
Or you could get a generator to power the pumps to refill the tanks. If they have water at street level and the tanks aren't filling, there probably isn't enough water pressure.
Well, we could actually do a little math... 1 psig = 2.31 feet of water (head), so....
Let's say there's 30 psig at the street. 30 x 2.31 = 69.3 feet, so as long as the top of the tank (hanging the end of the hose over the edge at the top) is 69 feet or less from the street, you could fill the tank. A short building, in other words, not over five stories or so.
Or, you could fill those five-gallon buckets on the hall-window fire escape, and cut six stories off that twelve-story climb.
But if the tanks aren't filling, it's because they don't have power, I would think, not because the fire mains have lost pressure. It might also vary from place to place, especially if the firefighters are pulling down water in several open hydrants nearby.
But don't the buildings all have fire hoses in cabinets in the hallways? Maybe not?
You want the public servants to WORK? Horrors... Oh, the humanity.
Synthese is fine. Their plate and screw sets are the gold standard, and trauma requires no-pre authorization, and doesn't see declining case counts in this high deductible environment. J&J has other bigger problems in ortho, like the pricing pressure on Mitek's anchors, and Orbay's non-compete has expired so J&J's Hand Innovations DVR product is getting crushed by his new design.
Re: water...
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-19-10/fear-we-are-returning-time-history-where-it-common-occurrence-fight-ones-life
From Item 6
My buddy is an airline pilot w a JNJ hip replacement. Seems now he has over the top levels of a couple of heavy metals in his blood stream and can't fly or walk w'/out a cane 'cause the JNJ hip is slowly disintegrating in his body. Seems his lawyer went to work and discovered JNJ knew about the poisoning and disintegration problems before my buddy got his hip but put the kabosh on getting the word out to the orthopedic community.
These fucking criminals need jail time. My buddy will never walk correctly or fly commercially again. Wo knows what the heavy metals will do him.
Who the fuck do they think they are?
Why, "they" are lawless incorporated thugs. What the fuck are you expecting, a sole or conscience? You are actually surprised?!
HA HA!
To kangaroo korporate kourt to take your friends other leg.
That's right, they should have left him with a painful arthritic hip, in a wheelchair, instead of giving him all those additional years of pain-free mobility!
Jail time isn't bad enough, we should hang 'em and then kill 'em!
Your friend sure is lucky to have a good lawyer working in his best interest. Yes, sir, he surely is lucky.
DELETED
Significantly more than you know, obviously.
You wanna make thisout to be a lawyer grab.
His lawyer is his brother working gratis to help him.
You wanna blame the victim?
Tell me why?
Victim? LOL!
That was the arthritis that did that to him. He should sue his immune system and his dad for making him play high school football.
How old is your buddy? What was his condition before he got the hip replacement? How long has he had the hip replacement?
On a long enough timeline
the ambulatory rate for
everyone drops to zero.
Not a fan of high school football either, and won't sign to let my kid play. But, he had the implant less than 6 years, he's 56 YO. The implant began to dissolve and when they pulled it out, they said all the the metal bits and flakes could never be flushed out or removed.
Why do you dodge the whole corporate non-disclosure issue?
Six is is not a longenough timeline for any hip replacement, and the ones that fail are commonly failure to adhere to pelvis or femur dueto infection or bonding agent, not disintegration followed by blood/tissue poisoning.
Like I said at the begining, they should have left him with a painful arthritic hip, in a wheelchair, instead of giving him all those (6) additional years of pain-free mobility, and dozens more after getting upgraded, if he isn't too obese. Think of all the quality time he has missed with his brother pushing him around in the wheelchair. Airline cockpits are wheelchair compliant, right?
So, no other company makes a competing product? There is only one supplier in the world? There is no other possible treatment? Sounds like an opportunity for someone.
The point is that they knew there was a problem and witheld the information. They could have said "ours is defective, use someone else's product". Or if they really are the only ones making the product, they could have pulled them and delayed the operation until there was a non-defective replacement.
You are saying that makers of products have no responsibility to prevent defects that cause harm?
Not the facts, although the plaintiffs' lawyers would like you to think so. Material degradation is, was, and will be for the forseeable future a well known and fully disclosed risk of artificial joints. Well before 2006, when his "Buddy" supposedly received his hip, all the manufacturers and surgeons were giving patients multiple materials and method options to select from as a means of accounting for just this risk. Nobody made his "buddy" get the hip replaced. It is an ELECTIVE surgery.
You folks sound like Bove's boys that bought Apple shares, but now want a redo because it went down in price. Ever heard of assumption of risk? What about waiver? Grow up. This type of litigious behavior causes the price of healthcare to go up for all of us.
I spent the day taking care of my elderly mom away from the computer and now that I'm back and have read your comment, I've come to the conclusion that your reasoning is poor. Product liability has nothing to do with choice or procedural liability. Your problem is not with my buddy, or the surgeon who has chosen a product from a the company which has withheld material information, and on whom his patient's rely for his skill and product recommendation, but rather, your issue is with liability law in general and specifically as it affects healthcare.
I have practiced in healthcare for 27 years. I know malpractice, its costs across disciplines, and how it has ebbed and flowed for almost three decades. I have seen my rates rise and fall based on no actuarial cost changes but rather based on nothing more than the number of insurers in the insurance marketplace. if you knew 1st hand anything about product placement in the healthcare marketplace, who decides which products are used and when, how they are marketed to the specialist and the facilities in which they are provided to patients, and what jacks the cost of your healthcare in material ways, this discussion never would have occurred.
You have been feeding on soundbites and are not in command of the the facts regarding healthcare spending.
I also suspect you came up short in the legal arena once upon a time and can't just let it go. Try not to drag it into discussions in which it has no merit.
Nice find on the pump, HH. Not sure it's an improvement on the old clappers we have, but I'll look into it.
My building lost water and power right away as we dont have the rooftop tank. They opened the hydrant in fornt so I was running buckets up to the old folks in my building the last 2 days. I hear we will be powered up either tonight or tomorrow. I am worried about Copper Salts emitting gasses in the subway so I am going to be walking until it gets too cold out....
I read in the post that Mayor Bloomberg had food and high powered generators diverted from Staten Island to the Marathon
Bloomberg Diverts Food, Generators to NYC Marathon
Marathon is power mad! Last Updated: 1:44 AM, November 2, 2012 Posted: November 02, 2012 Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers huddle in the dark each night after the most devastating storm in city history — while two massive generators chug away in Central Park and a third sits idle waiting to power a media center during Sunday’s NYC Marathon. Like hell. Those generators could power 400 homes on Staten Island or the Rockaways or any storm-wracked neighborhood in the city certain to be suffering the after-effects of Hurricane Sandy on Sunday morning. Shouldn’t they come first? Shouldn’t the race just be canceled? Damned straight. But Mayor Mike’s trademark Manhattan myopia is back: While ravaged outer-borough New Yorkers shiver in the dark, he declares the race will go on.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/cancel_the_marathon_y0Mw...
Bloomberg is emblematic of the people and their ethos that have been running / enforcing the cartel of craven oligopolistic fascism since the 90's.
Feck Bloomberg !
You can say Fuck Bloomberg. See, I just did.
Mike Bloomberg's Bermuda
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/04/26/nyregion/20100426BERMUDA_ind...
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Mikes+Carbon+Neutral+Weekend+Getway+Cottag...
and posted yesterday
An American technology wizard and frequent visitor to Bermuda with a vast home overlooking the ocean in Tucker's Town, he founded a global financial company - Bloomberg - in his own name, more than 75% of which he still owns. 69 years old (in November 2010) he is the wealthiest divorced man, with 2 daughters in New York City, with an estimated US$18.1 billion in assets in February 2011. His Bermuda home was recently extensively re-worked at a reported cost of $10.5 million. His neighbors there include Hugh Lowenstein, billionaire Ross Perot and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. His other homes are two in New York's Westchester County, Armonk, a townhouse at 17 E. 79th Street in Manhattan, a 20-acre farm in North Salem, a London apartment in Cadogan Square and a condominium in Vail, Colorado. His financial information and news services are widely used locally. He was a 2001 Republican mayoral candidate for New York City, won the election and became Mayor after November 6, 2001 (still in office in 2011). He has a fleet of aircraft at his disposal. A licensed pilot, he owns a high-performance single-engine plane for quick jaunts. It is a Mooney Bravo M20M, seats four, flies high and goes fast. On February 21, 2006 the New York Daily News reported that Mayor Bloomberg's presence in Bermuda was about to get a whole lot bigger. His daughters, Emma and Georgina, filed an application with the Bermuda Minister of Home Affairs to buy The Jungle, a 1.7-acre property next to their dad's $10.5 million mansion. The ultra-exclusive property is owned by Hugh Lowenstein, one of Bloomberg's oldest friends and a member of his company's board of directors. A Bermuda real estate agency described The Jungle as an "exquisite property" and "magnificent house" with a large galleried living room, replete with a cedar railing balcony leading to the bedrooms. There's an outdoor pool in a beautiful garden setting with a sloping lawn heading to a large dock. The house has four bedrooms, five bathrooms and a fireplace in the living room.
http://www.bermuda-online.org/intexecs.htm
Running that Marathon is such a sad sick commentary on TPTB's real focus - PR.
If I was in the dark, I'd be ambushing the runners with pitchforks on Sunday and taking their water.
Just Sayin'