Pharmaceuticals giant Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay an American woman $US417-million ($AUD525-million) after she claimed using the company’s Baby Powder for feminine hygiene purposes gave her ovarian cancer.
63-year-old California resident Eva Echeverria used the talc-based product since she was 11, with her lawyers arguing that Johnson & Johnson failed to warn its customers of the cancer risk that genital talc use presents, The Guardian reports.
Echeverria’s lawsuit is one of many to go to trial in the US, with Johnson & Johnson facing 4800 similar claims across the country. Echeverria’s case was the first to occur before a state jury outside Missouri, where Johnson & Johnson have already lost four out of five trials in the past two years and been ordered to pay over $300-million, smh.com.au reports.
But Johnson & Johnson will appeal the decision, a company spokesperson has said. “We are guided by the science, which supports the safety of Johnson’s Baby Powder,” Carol Goodrich has told media. “We are preparing for additional trials in the US and we will continue to defend the safety of Johnson’s Baby Powder.”
Johnson & Johnson cite the editorial board of the National Cancer Institute’s Physician Data Query, which wrote in April that “the weight of evidence does not support” any link between ovarian cancer and talc, The Guardian reports.
