Talc calc

 I don't think I killed my mother. But . . .

When I was 10, 11, 12, at the end of March each year we'd ask our mother what she wanted for her birthday. Her unwavering reply was "Oh, I don't know; Talc de Coty or covered coat-hangers". Both of which were A Thing for middle-aged, middle-class women in the 1960s. The first time small me went on a birthday mission on my ownio, I went to Boot's the Chemist determined to buy a tin as [R]. But noted that Boot's Own Generic Talcum Powder was half the price for 3x the quantity. What had my mother been thinking? She'd been allowing herself to be bilked for all those years! My mother, recognising a teaching moment, explained that sometimes less is more. Well I took that on board as an example of life's diverse ways of thinking. And found it difficult to reconcile with the fact that A Lot of  eye-wateringly expensive talcum powder finished up on the bathroom floor.

I've just romped through No More Tears: the dark secrets of Johnson & Johnson (2025) by Gardiner Harris. This is a long-form scatter-gun volume of investigative reporting listing the manifold times when J&J pursued profit in their marketing of cosmetics, drugs and medical devices . . . let the customers fall [dead] where they may. 

Because J&J is the world's biggest MegaPharma Corp, and they shifted A Lot  of product, the [dead] count laid at their door is, according to Harris (un)comfortably in excess of 100,000, or even 1,000,000 people. Their anti-psychotic offering Risperdal was doled out  to kids with ADHD and to troublesome old dears in nursing homes. To sell more units they suborned psychiatrists, GPs and matrons with 'consultancies', dinners, jaunts to Florida and biros . . . so many branded biros. They also buried any reports of adverse reactions. I've written [too much] about Eli Lilly's rival medication Zyprexa aka Olanzapine.

But perhaps the longest running J&J saga concerned their iconic baby powder the existence of which stoked much of the positive feelings Joe and Josie Public had towards J&J. Talc is a form of magnesium silicate Mg₃(Si₂O₅)₂(OH)₂. It is the softest mineral on the Mohs scale and is dug out of the ground from mines in Vermont and Italy and many other places. Asbestos is another form of magnesium silicate Mg₃(Si₂O₅)(OH)₄. It is an almost inevitable contaminant of talc, some mining locations being worse than others. Long after baby powder became sn essential part of This American Life evidence of the association between asbestos exposure cancer became overwhelming. Folk started testing for the stuff in likely and unlikely places and found it everywhere. J&J's made some effort to mitigate asbestos in their premier baby product but couldn't eliminate the last ppms . . . so STOUTLY asserted that baby powder had no significant asbestos and continued to manufacture talc-based baby powder even after rivals reformulated to cornstarch. the J&J C-suite doubled down on their denials. That change in corporate culture soon spread through every division of the conglomerate: nothing to see here . . . this biro is filled with $100 bills . . . that senator needs a corporate campaign donation . . . christmas bonus for everyone who exceeds their sales targets.

It is certainly likely that the industrial talcum powder which I gave my mother in 1965 had more asbestos than the fancy stuff. But a) she probably dumped it b) she lived to 99¾ c) she never had ovarian cancer. So I can probably damp my conscience on matricide-by-talc.

Footnote on the workings of libraries. Several years ago, all the public libraries of Ireland adopted a common catalogue and reservation system. 'tis brilliant: you can, from your sofa, browse away and wait for the call when the book you desire arrives at the nearest convenient branch. I ordered No More Tears a few months ago and watched my reservation number crawl up the list. It's published this year, involves scandal, there's plenty other folks who want to read it but haven't €20 available for a single read or shelf-space for another hardback. 

Image my surprise to when I was, for the first time this year, in Bagenalstown Library before meeting Dau.II off the train . . . and saw 'my' book on the recent accessions shelf opposite the counter. That's a bit unfair, I said to the librarian when I checked it out, but I could check it out and I did. Then again, each County Library system is still an autonomous unit with its own budget and priorities. Our county had decided to buy 1 copy of that book, so it seems right that local patrons should have first dibs on borrowing it. When it goes back tomorrow, it can get in the queue and get shipped to Sligo.