When a saboteur laced Tylenol capsules with cyanide in 1982, killing seven people in the Chicago area, Johnson & Johnson’s quick recall of millions of capsules, free replacement medicines and frequent updates set the standard for public relations in a crisis.
But on April 30, the company again faced a recall, this time of more than 136 million bottles of pediatric Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and Zyrtec due to manufacturing problems. Suddenly, the company’s halo is showing some tarnish. Investigators haven’t linked the defects in the medication to any health problems, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the division of the company responsible for quality control at the Pennsylvania-based plant, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, had a pattern of violations and delayed reporting problems to the agency.
