The 6 Worst Well being Scandals of the Previous 25 Years

In drugs, there’s nearly no such factor as a free lunch. Nearly each drug or intervention can have its unintended effects.

Ideally, rigorous research and the regulatory course of will be certain that an accredited drug’s advantages clearly outweigh any potential harms. However typically, researchers (and sufferers) will uncover unintended effects that went unnoticed through the approval course of. Different occasions, extra hardly ever, a drug’s maker is revealed to have buried incriminating details about their drug’s harms from the general public or to have created a product that doesn’t work in any respect as meant. And when that occurs, a foul or ineffective remedy can spark a serious scandal.

There’s no scarcity of pharmaceutical scandals which have occurred through the years, however to maintain issues quick, let’s simply concentrate on among the largest ones to have occurred on this quarter-century.

1. Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder merchandise

For many years, individuals had unsuccessfully tried to sue J&J over its client merchandise containing talc, notably child powder, claiming that the merchandise had contributed to their cancers.

In 2018, nevertheless, an explosive report from Reuters found the corporate had hidden proof that the talc it used may typically include detectable ranges of asbestos, a recognized carcinogen. The report helped gas a brand new wave of lawsuits and rising public mistrust within the firm’s child powder merchandise. Within the years since, the corporate has repeatedly lost civil fits over its talc merchandise, some totaling into the billions, and its appeals continued to fail, even earlier than the Supreme Court.

Although J&J has maintained that its merchandise are protected, the corporate ultimately eliminated talc from all its powder manufacturers (as a substitute utilizing cornstarch), tried and failed to cowl its legal responsibility over these lawsuits by having a subsidiary declare chapter, and even this yr has continued to lose court docket instances tying its merchandise to individuals’s most cancers.

Curiously sufficient, although asbestos is thought to trigger most cancers, previous analysis hasn’t discovered a transparent hyperlink between talc as an entire (together with asbestos-free talc) and most cancers, and there stays some disagreement over the extent of the chance posed by talcum powder merchandise. The American Most cancers Society states that if talc can increase an individual’s threat of ovarian most cancers (the first sort of most cancers linked to talc), the “total improve is prone to very be small” for a person girl. The World Well being Group has acknowledged that asbestos-containing talc must be thought of carcinogenic, whereas talc on the whole is “probably carcinogenic.”

2. Biogen and the Alzheimer’s drug that wasn’t

In June 2021, the FDA approved Biogen and Eisai’s antibody-based Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm. At first look, the approval ought to have been excellent news: the primary drug of its variety, and one meant to really goal a key driver of the degenerative dysfunction, beta amyloid. However if truth be told, it was something however.

In a uncommon transfer on the time, the FDA went towards the suggestions of its professional advisory panel, who voted towards approval. The skin consultants rightly famous that the info supporting the drug’s effectiveness was blended at greatest. The FDA additionally granted Aduhelm accelerated approval, a particular class that requires much less rigorous proof. Media outlet STAT Information later uncovered an unusually friendly relationship between high Biogen staff and FDA officers, which prompted a Congressional investigation into the matter. And so as to add insult to damage, Biogen initially set Aduhelm’s record value at $56,000 a yr—a price excessive sufficient to doubtlessly devastate the pockets of sufferers and Medicare if the drug noticed widespread use amongst older People.

Many doctors quickly rebelled towards the approval, refusing to prescribe it to their sufferers, whereas Medicare determined to severely prohibit its protection of the drug. Biogen ultimately gave up attempting to make Aduhelm a factor, following years of poor gross sales, and pulled the drug from the market in early 2024.

This saga does have a little bit of a contented ending, a minimum of. There have been different comparable medicine developed and accredited lately, and in contrast to Aduhelm, these medicine do appear to have an actual, if nonetheless modest, effect on treating the situation.

3. Purdue Pharma and OxyContin

Purdue Pharma has maybe develop into essentially the most notorious poster youngster for the opioid disaster.

Its blockbuster drug, OxyContin, helped gas rising charges of opioid use dysfunction following its launch to the general public in 1996. And although there are lots of drivers of the disaster, together with the proliferation of stronger brokers like fentanyl in later years, the corporate did ultimately admit to downplaying the addictive threat of its merchandise, paying medical doctors unlawful kickbacks to prescribe their medicine, and turning a blind eye to the widespread diversion of its medicine from pharmacies to the black market.

Following a glut of civil and federal lawsuits over OxyContin, Purdue Pharma shuttered its doorways, and its sole homeowners—the Sackler household—agreed to pay out greater than $4 billion as a part of a far-reaching settlement in 2021. The courts bumped this up to $6 billion in 2023. That settlement, nevertheless, additionally offered immunity from additional civil costs towards the Sacklers themselves. And although the scenario has lastly started to enhance as of late, roughly 50,000 People nonetheless died from opioid overdoses final yr.

4. Martin Shkreli’s drug value surge

Typically the scandals aren’t in regards to the medicine themselves, however what they’re being bought for.

In 2015, Martin Shkreli grew to become public enemy primary when his firm, Turing Prescription drugs, purchased the anti-parasitic and anti-HIV drug Daraprim and raised its $13.50 price tag per pill by over 5,000 percent. Shkreli’s cocky, unrepentant angle towards his many critics earned him the nickname of the “Pharma bro.”

Satirically sufficient, his preliminary downfall had nothing to do with Daraprim. Quickly after he grew to become notorious, federal prosecutors in New York charged Shkreli with securities fraud, and in 2017, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years of federal jail.

Although Shkreli was launched early in 2022, his firm’s administration of Daraprim did later come again to chunk him. In 2020, the FTC and others sued the corporate, now referred to as Vyera Prescription drugs after Shkreli’s imprisonment, alleging that it carried out an “elaborate anticompetitive scheme” to take care of its monopoly on the drug. The corporate reached a settlement with the FTC a yr later, and the authorized battle ultimately required Shkreli himself to pay out a $64 million wonderful and to avoid the pharmaceutical business solely. In 2023, Vyera declared chapter and sold the rights to Daraprim. Final yr, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom snubbed Shkreli’s try to dismiss his private wonderful and ban.

Don’t really feel too dangerous for Shkreli, although. Since his launch from jail, he’s been busy attempting to shill crypto and AI knockoffs of WebMD.

5. Abbott’s tainted child system

In early 2022, the FDA warned households to avoid sure powdered child formulation produced by the corporate Abbott Diet. The merchandise, it seems, have been contaminated by Cronobacter micro organism.

A number of youngsters have been hospitalized, and two infants who had consumed the merchandise later died. Abbott issued a widespread recall of its merchandise and shut down its system manufacturing facility in Sturgis, Michigan. The FDA’s investigation concluded that Abbott had failed to take care of sanitary circumstances and that the ability had a minimum of eight current cases of Cronobacter contamination relationship again to 2019.

It could take 4 months for the corporate’s Sturgis plant to reopen, following an settlement with the FDA to overtake its security practices, the size of which helped contribute to a nationwide system scarcity that yr. Lawmakers on each side additionally criticized the FDA for its delayed response to the disaster, because the company first caught wind of potential points as early as September 2021.

Although there haven’t been comparable recollects or reported outbreaks since, an intensive ProPublica report in April 2025 interviewed staff who claimed that the Sturgis plant continues to have severe security and sanitary dangers to today. One worker reported what they discovered to the FDA, nevertheless it’s unclear whether or not the brand new Trump administration will take motion.

6. Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos

Elizabeth Holmes based the corporate Theranos in 2003. It centered across the improvement of a tool meant to make blood assessments simpler than ever. With only a few drops of blood from a single finger prick, Holmes claimed, her firm’s “Edison” gadget may precisely detect a litany of well being circumstances. By the mid-2010s, Holmes’ advertising and marketing of Theranos had allowed her to develop into a darling of the biotech world: a younger, self-made entrepreneur styled after Steve Jobs, who at one level was value almost $5 billion.

The difficulty was, because the world ultimately came upon, it was all based mostly on falsehoods. Beginning in late 2015, Wall Road Journal reporter John Carreyrou exposed the fraudulent practices of Holmes and Theranos. Although Holmes had struck a partnership with retail chain Walgreens in 2013 to supply the Edison gadget to its clients, the Edison may merely by no means do what Holmes claimed it may. And ultimately, the corporate secretly resorted to utilizing different commercially obtainable machines to carry out most of its blood testing providers.

Holmes’ deception didn’t simply mislead traders; a number of individuals reported that the defective take a look at outcomes offered by Theranos made them fearful about having medical circumstances they didn’t even have, resembling HIV, or in any other case harmed their well being.

Holmes was convicted of investor fraud and different costs over Theranos in 2022 and was sentenced to an 11-year stint in jail (later reduced by two years), whereas her co-executive and one-time romantic associate Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was sentenced to almost 13 years the subsequent month. As of this yr, she’s made her return to social media (through having another person publish her phrases).