The Tylenol Mafia Read Online Free PDF Page A

department to several top executive positions at J&J operating companies. Of his recent appointment, Collins said, “It was a felicitous appointment for me, or so I thought at the time. Before this promotion, I had responsibility for Mexico where there had been two devaluations in one year; in Central America where there had been a war; and several South American countries experiencing rampant inflation and more devaluations . I was coming from a scenario of problems to McNeil, a company with a great future and what I thought was an opportunity to win a few.”
    Collins was on the phone with a J&J subsidiary in Mexico when his secretary interrupted him. She said Burke was on the other line and it was an emergency. Collins told her to relay the message that he would head up to Burke’s office as soon as he finished handling his own emergency. The Mexican government had implemented new monetary controls to try to curb the plunging value of the peso. If Collins could not get supplies fast enough to his Mexican company, it would be out of business by the end of the year. Soon enough, Collins made his way up to Burke’s office where Quilty, Clare, McNeil President Joseph Chiesa, and Burke had already begun to plan their strategy.
    Larry Foster, J&J’s vice president of public relations, had taken the day off. He was at home writing a book titled, A Company That Cares, the History of Johnson & Johnson . Foster had been a reporter, bureau chief, and night editor of New Jersey’s largest newspaper, The Newark News , before Robert Wood Johnson II hired him in 1957 to help form Johnson & Johnson’s first public relations department.
    Sometime around mid-morning Foster received a call from Murray with news of the Tylenol problem. “That was a bombshell,” Foster said later. Foster made a beeline to New Brunswick, arriving at Johnson & Johnson headquarters forty-five minutes after Murray’s call. He rushed up to Burke’s office and joined the strategy session.
      “I never came home for two days,” said Foster. “Slept in the office - what sleep we had.”
    “One-word description of my reaction – disbelief,” remarked Foster. “Second description - two words - total disbelief… I think that this best described how many in the company felt that our product could have been used as a murder weapon. I mean, a product that is designed to help you take care of pain would be used as a murder weapon?”
    Foster said there were something like 150 or 175 calls the first day, and over a course of the weeks ahead, something like 2,500 reporters covered the story. His staff kept a log of every reporter’s name and the response they were given. Foster sensed very early on that the reporters from the television, print, and radio media thought that Johnson & Johnson was a victim and would, therefore, be cast publicly as a victim.
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    News of what became known as the “Tylenol crisis” was broadcast nationwide on Thursday evening, September 30, 1982, on all three networks. The Tylenol murders case was the most extensively covered news event since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Over 100,000 separate articles about the poisonings ran in U.S. newspapers. National and local television news programs broadcast hundreds of hours of coverage. Poison control centers nationwide reported being swamped with calls from worried consumers who had taken Tylenol capsules. One Chicago hospital received 700 calls about Tylenol in one day. Within 15 hours of the first death, investigators had determined that someone had replaced acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol capsules, with cyanide. “We have a madman out there,” declared Illinois Governor, James Thompson.
    Overnight, the market share for Tylenol dropped from 37 percent of the over-the-counter (OTC) analgesic market to just 7 percent. Many public relations experts predicted the end of the Tylenol brand. “I don’t think they can ever sell another product under that