Johnson & Johnson has stated it’s going to discontinue manufacturing of its talc-based child powder in 2023, because it battles nearly 40,000 authorized claims that the product precipitated customers to fall sick with most cancers.
The US drugmaker stated on Thursday that it had determined to transition to a cornstarch-based child powder, which it has already launched in the US and Canadian markets.
J&J stated its place on the protection of the talc-based product, which has been offered for greater than a century and is intently related to the J&J model, was unchanged.
“We stand firmly behind the decades of independent scientific analysis by medical experts around the world that confirms talc-based JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer,” the corporate stated in an announcement.
J&J stopped promoting the talc-based energy in the US and Canada in 2020, citing flagging gross sales. That resolution coincided with a deluge of court docket circumstances from individuals who claimed that J&J’s talc-based child powder product had been tainted with asbestos and precipitated them to develop both ovarian most cancers or mesothelioma.
J&J has misplaced a number of massive circumstances, together with a Missouri resolution that awarded $4.7bn in damages to 22 girls who blamed their ovarian most cancers on asbestos in the drugmaker’s child powder. In June, the Supreme Court refused to overview the case, in which the damages had already been diminished to $2.1bn.
Last 12 months J&J deployed a controversial chapter technique generally known as the “Texas two step” to assist it handle the virtually 40,000 circumstances.
The chapter manoeuvre utilised business-friendly legal guidelines in Texas that allowed J&J to separate itself into two separate entities and ringfence all its talc liabilities inside a subsidiary, which it known as LTL. LTL then filed for Chapter 11 chapter safety, which put a keep on all talc claims.
Claimants have launched authorized proceedings in an try to throw out the chapter.