On September 21, 2015 Stewart Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison because his company, the Peanut Corporation of America, produced salmonella-contaminated peanut butter. He knew there was a problem with the peanut butter and shipped it anyway. More than 700 people became ill, 9 died. Among the fatalities are Cliff Tousignant a Korean War veteran with three Purple Hearts and Shirley Almer who fought a brain tumor and lung cancer only to succumb to Parnell's tainted peanut butter. The conditions at his company's facility where the peanut butter was produced were appalling--rodents, roaches and bird droppings. People died because Parnell prioritized profits over sanitation.
Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in both criminal and civil fines stemming from allegations it aggressively promoted the off-label prescription of the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to elderly suffering from dementia and children with ADHD and Autism. It was not that Risperdal was not an approved …show more content…
These are headlines from just the past few weeks. Each case represents a company behaving unethically and illegally, by putting profits ahead of the public's welfare.
A large number of Americans think there is too much government regulation, 49% according to recent Gallup polls. And some of the incidents mentioned above were not uncovered by government regulators, but through litigation. Which raises the question, when was the last FDA inspection of the Peanut Corporation of America facilities? Did the EPA ever do its own water testing in West Virginia near the DuPont facility? Maybe we do not need more regulation, maybe we just need a few more regulators, boots on the ground, to insure the existing regulations are actually enforced. I know that suggestion does not appeal to the "Honey I Shrunk the Government" crowd, but I like peanut butter, just not enough to risk my life over
Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in both criminal and civil fines stemming from allegations it aggressively promoted the off-label prescription of the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to elderly suffering from dementia and children with ADHD and Autism. It was not that Risperdal was not an approved …show more content…
These are headlines from just the past few weeks. Each case represents a company behaving unethically and illegally, by putting profits ahead of the public's welfare.
A large number of Americans think there is too much government regulation, 49% according to recent Gallup polls. And some of the incidents mentioned above were not uncovered by government regulators, but through litigation. Which raises the question, when was the last FDA inspection of the Peanut Corporation of America facilities? Did the EPA ever do its own water testing in West Virginia near the DuPont facility? Maybe we do not need more regulation, maybe we just need a few more regulators, boots on the ground, to insure the existing regulations are actually enforced. I know that suggestion does not appeal to the "Honey I Shrunk the Government" crowd, but I like peanut butter, just not enough to risk my life over