EXCLUSIVE: Ever since J&J disclosed that a government test found asbestos in its Baby Powder, the company has attacked the validity of the result. In challenging the FDA’s finding, however, the healthcare giant is casting doubt on one of its own experts
) disclosed this month that a government test had turned up asbestos in its Baby Powder, the company has attacked the validity of the result.
The private Maryland lab that found asbestos in Baby Powder under a contract with the FDA is run by a paid expert witness for J&J. “I have never heard of anything like this,” said Richard Ausness, a University of Kentucky law professor who specializes in product liability, referring to Saldivar’s dual roles. “This is bad news for J&J. The plaintiffs are clearly going to say this lab director worked for J&J for years, and he found asbestos so there must be asbestos there.”
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, FDA officials said they stood by the AMA lab and its results. They also said they were not surprised by J&J’s findings because contaminants are not uniformly dispersed throughout talc and different testing methods can yield varying results. J&J did not respond to questions about the Indianapolis case. The company declined to comment on Saldivar’s role in the FDA testing, or on how it might affect the company’s legal strategy going forward.In a June deposition, Saldivar said J&J lawyers had retained him in 2017 as a company expert in “maybe 20 or 30” cases. His firm bills $200 to $350 an hour for his services, he testified.
On Friday, the FDA posted online Saldivar’s 16-page report to the agency on the analysis of J&J Baby Powder. In samples weighing less than a gram, the lab said it found six chrysotile asbestos fibers. Given that the samples were extremely small, the asbestos could amount to millions of fibers per gram, testing experts told Reuters.
In an Oct. 3 deposition in a New York lawsuit, J&J Chief Executive Alex Gorsky dismissed the findings of asbestos over the years, saying “they were later shown to be inaccurate, incomplete and just not correct.” In its Tuesday announcement, J&J said that one of the labs it hired initially found asbestos in three samples of Baby Powder, but the lab determined that a portable air conditioner running when the samples were prepared was contaminated with asbestos. Subsequent tests in a different room found no asbestos, the company said.
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