One day in 2004, Gardiner Harris, a pharmaceutical reporter for the New York Times, was early for a flight and sat down at an airport bar. He struck up a conversation with the woman on the barstool next to him who happened to be a drug sales rep for Johnson & Johnson. Her horrific story about unethical sales practices and the devastating impact they’d had on her family fundamentally changed the nature of how Harris would cover the company-and the entire pharmaceutical industry-for the Times. His subsequent investigations and ongoing research since that very first conversation led to this book-a blistering exposé of a trusted American institution and the largest healthcare conglomerate in the world.

Harris takes us light years away from J & J’s image as the child-friendly ‘baby company’, uncovering reams of evidence showing decades of dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions. He explores multiple disasters: cover-ups regarding the linkage between Johnson’s Baby Powder to cancer, the surprising dangers of Tylenol, a campaign to sell antipsychotics that are alleged to have cost countless lives, a popular drug used to support cancer patients that studies have shown to actually increase the risk of cancerous tumours and questionable marketing that accelerated opioid addictions through a product that rivals even those of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma.

Filled with shocking and infuriating but utterly necessary revelations, The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson is a landmark work of investigative journalism that lays bare the deep-rooted corruption behind the image of babies bathing with a smile.