Tylenol

"We didn't believe it could happen," James E. Burke, board chairman of Johnson & Johnson, told a news conference Friday. "And nobody else did. " But last week, it did happen. A woman in Westchester County, N.Y., died of cyanide poisoning after taking Tylenol capsules - more than three years after the deaths of seven Chicago- area residents who had taken cyanide-laced Tylenol. Now, Johnson & Johnson once again faces an extraordinary business challenge. Can the company find a way to renew the public's trust and avoid the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue from what had been one of the nation's most popular over-the-counter drugs?

Jar Wars! There is a revolution under way in the world of food packaging. You need only walk through the aisles of your local supermarket to see hundreds of examples. Look at that spaghetti sauce jar. The lid says: LOOK - SAFETY BUTTON. REJECT IF BUTTON IS UP. (The center of the lid feels firm until the jar is opened, then becomes noticeably flexible.) Look at that cottage cheese container with a plastic collar locked around the lid. The lid can't be opened until the collar is broken.

"We didn't believe it could happen," James E. Burke, board chairman of Johnson & Johnson, told a news conference Friday. "And nobody else did. " But last week, it did happen. A woman in Westchester County, N.Y., died of cyanide poisoning after taking Tylenol capsules - more than three years after the deaths of seven Chicago- area residents who had taken cyanide-laced Tylenol. Now, Johnson & Johnson once again faces an extraordinary business challenge. Can the company find a way to renew the public's trust and avoid the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue from what had been one of the nation's most popular over-the-counter drugs?

Robert Lincoln McNeil Jr., the Philadelphia chemist who helped introduce the world to the best-selling painkiller Tylenol and later sold his family business to pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, died Thursday at the age of 94 of heart failure at his Wyndmoor home. A grandson of Robert McNeil, who founded the company that became McNeil Laboratories in a Kensington drugstore in 1879, McNeil Jr. also was a major patron of many cultural and educational institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Zoo, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of the Sciences and Yale University.

In 1982, following the deaths of seven Chicago-area residents who had taken cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules, Johnson & Johnson, parent of Tylenol's manufacturer, ordered a nationwide recall that eventually cost the company $100 million. That same year, lawyers for Johnson & Johnson sued nine of its insurance companies to recover $80 million of the recall cost. The insurance companies, including Employees Insurance of Wausau, countered that the coverage pertained only to claims by individuals who sue McNeil Consumer Products, the division that made Tylenol capsules.

Consumers need to be warned that they could unwittingly take a fatal overdose of the over-the-counter drug acetaminophen, which is contained in painkillers such as Tylenol and in cold relievers, a government panel was told yesterday. A mother who said her son died from the drug told the panel, "Death is not an acceptable side effect. " Hours later, the panel voted 21-1 to recommend that a stronger warning - yet to be determined - be placed on the labels of more than 200 products that contain the drug.

A man accused of faking his death to try to collect a $1 million life insurance policy tried to commit suicide on the eve of his trial, the hospital treating him told a federal court. Derek Nicholson, 31, took an overdose of Tylenol on Sunday evening, said Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, N.J., in a medical report that was read aloud yesterday in federal court in Trenton. Nicholson's condition is critical but stable and his prognosis fair to good, according to the report.

Though its Fort Washington plant is still being repaired, and overall profit fell 10.6 percent to $3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2013, Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday that it has put more Tylenol and Motrin on store shelves in the United States through its McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit. "We are pleased with results in our consumer division, with over-the-counter sales in the U.S. up 14 percent," J&J chief financial officer Dominic Caruso said in a conference call with stock market analysts.

After a woman died last weekend from taking cyanide-laced Tylenol, many people in Philadelphia assumed it was an isolated incident and continued taking the painkiller. But as word spread last night that two more bottles of Tylenol were found to contain the poison in Westchester County, N.Y., where the woman died, few people seemed willing to take a chance any longer. "I'm off Tylenol now," said Carol Gentis, 34, as she shopped in Aversa Pharmacy in South Philadelphia last night.

If there's one lesson to be learned from the Tylenol capsule poisoning incident, it's that corporate openness, accessibility and prompt action in the face of a calamity make sound business sense. The Johnson & Johnson Co. has been forced to demonstrate that twice. Unlike other companies caught up in crisis, Johnson & Johnson has recognized that honesty in the face of adversity reaps its rewards. By way of contrast, compare the manner in which Metropolitan Edison Co. handled its version of the Tylenol disaster - the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island - or how Union Carbide Corp.

Though its Fort Washington plant is still being repaired, and overall profit fell 10.6 percent to $3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2013, Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday that it has put more Tylenol and Motrin on store shelves in the United States through its McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit. "We are pleased with results in our consumer division, with over-the-counter sales in the U.S. up 14 percent," J&J chief financial officer Dominic Caruso said in a conference call with stock market analysts.

TRENTON - Former Johnson & Johnson CEO James E. Burke, who steered the health-care giant through the Tylenol poisonings in the 1980s that resulted in the first tamper-resistant product packaging, has died. The company said Burke died late Friday at the age of 87, after a long, unspecified illness. Burke, who ran the New Brunswick, N.J., company for 13 of his 37 years there, also had a big impact in his second career, as chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America for 16 years.

After Johnson & Johnson reported lower overall sales and profit for the second quarter Tuesday, in part because of continuing problems at its McNeil Consumer Healthcare facility in Fort Washington, new chief executive officer Alex Gorsky was asked why he was not considering selling pieces of the health-care giant. Goldman Sachs pharmaceutical analyst Jami Rubin wrote in May that J&J should follow the example of Pfizer Inc. and Abbott Laboratories Inc. and separate its three divisions — consumer products, pharmaceuticals, and devices — because it couldn't manage them all in a way to get full value.

AS FAR AS Dom Cuoci is concerned, X-ray is the bad version of a four-letter word.   So, though he took a line drive right off the inner part of his left foot Friday while pitching for La Salle High in a PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinal, he ignored all requests by his parents to let a machine take a look. "I told them I wasn't doing X-rays," Cuoci said, laughing. "I said they're too expensive and that we need to save money. " This is year No. 8 for District 12's involvement in PIAA baseball (fourth for the Catholic League)

McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the beleaguered Fort Washington drug maker, recalled more products on Thursday. This time, McNeil recalled one lot of Imodium Multi-Symptom Relief, an over-the-counter medicine for diarrhea, gas, bloating and cramps. A company spokeswoman said the 53,892 packages in that lot are likely still with wholesalers, so the recall is directed mainly toward them. Some of the packages might be torn. She said McNeil has no safety concerns about the products in torn packages, but having been exposed to air, the medicine might not provide the intended benefits.

Consumers wanting Tylenol and Motrin medicines will have to search farther and wait longer, while investors hoping that Johnson & Johnson will show greater profits from those products will have to wait, too. J&J said Tuesday that first-quarter profit rose 12.5 percent, but that there was a slight decrease in total sales and that the company has had increased costs and delays in fixing the problems at the McNeil Consumer Healthcare facility in...

Billionaire and investing icon Warren Buffett said Monday that health-care giant Johnson & Johnson has "obviously messed up in a lot of ways in the last few years. " Buffett is chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the investment company that owns or holds sizable positions in companies in numerous industries. J&J, Wells Fargo, Burlington Northern, and Coca-Cola are among the prominent companies in its portfolio. Buffett said Berkshire has not sold its stake but "we might.

Johnson & Johnson said Friday it is recalling more Tylenol. This time, the drugmaker is pulling back about 574,000 bottles of grape-flavored Infants' Tylenol because a new dispenser malfunctioned when used by some parents. The company had hoped the redesigned system with a syringe and flow restrictor would prevent overdosing. The recall is the latest setback for the McNeil Consumer Healthcare Division, which is based in Fort Washington. The manufacturing part of that facility was shut down in April 2010 because of several problems, including musty smells and metal particles in medicines, that led to dozens of recalls.

Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday that two high-level managers in the troubled consumer-products division would retire, marking more changes for the world's second-largest health-care company. McNeil Consumer Healthcare, part of the division, was responsible for producing much of the over-the-counter medicine - including Tylenol and Motrin products - that J&J sells in the United States. But McNeil's Fort Washington plant halted production in April 2010 because of manufacturing problems that led to dozens of recalls.