The 6 Worst Health Scandals of the Past 25 Years

In medicine, there is almost no such thing as a free lunch. Almost every medication or intervention will have its side effects.

Ideally, careful studies and a regulatory process will ensure that the benefits of an approved drug clearly outweigh any potential harms. But sometimes, researchers (and patients) will uncover side effects that went unnoticed during the approval process. Other times, and in rare cases, a drug maker is revealed to have concealed compromising information about the harms of its drugs from the public or created a product that does not work at all as intended. When this happens, poor or ineffective treatment can spark a major scandal.

There’s no shortage of drug scandals that have occurred over the years, but to keep things short, let’s just focus on some of the biggest scandals that have occurred this quarter century.

1. Johnson & Johnson talcum powder products

For decades, people have tried unsuccessfully to sue Johnson & Johnson over its consumer products containing talc, especially baby powder, claiming the products contributed to cancer.

However, in 2018, an interesting report from Reuters found that the company had hidden evidence that the talc it used could sometimes contain detectable levels of asbestos, a known carcinogen. The report helped spark a new wave of lawsuits and growing public distrust of the company’s baby powder products. In the years that followed, the company repeatedly lost civil lawsuits over its talc products, some of which totaled billions, and its appeals continued to fail, even before the Supreme Court.

Although Johnson & Johnson maintained that its products were safe, the company eventually removed talc from all of its powder brands (instead using cornstarch), tried and failed to cover its liability for these lawsuits by filing a subsidiary for bankruptcy, and until this year has continued to lose lawsuits linking its products to cancer.

Interestingly, although asbestos is known to cause cancer, previous research has not found a clear link between talc as a whole (including asbestos-free talc) and cancer, and there is still some disagreement about the extent of the risk talcum powder products pose. The American Cancer Society states that if talc can increase a person’s risk of ovarian cancer (the primary type of cancer associated with talc), “the overall increase is likely to be very small” for the individual woman. The World Health Organization has stated that talc containing asbestos should be considered a carcinogen, while talc in general is “probably carcinogenic”.

2. Biogen and the Alzheimer’s drug that wasn’t

In June 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Biogen and Eisai’s antibody-based Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm. At first glance, the approval should have been good news: a first-of-its-kind drug that actually aims to target the main driver of the degenerative disorder, beta-amyloid. But in reality, this was not the case.

In a rare move at the time, the FDA went against the recommendations of its own expert advisory group, which voted against approval. Outside experts rightly noted that the data supporting the drug’s effectiveness was mixed at best. The FDA also granted accelerated approval to Aduhelm, a special category that requires less stringent evidence. STAT News later revealed an unusually cordial relationship between senior Biogen employees and FDA officials, prompting congress to launch an investigation into the matter. To make matters worse, Biogen initially set the list price for Aduhelm at $56,000 per year — a cost high enough to dent the pockets of patients and Medicare if the drug saw widespread use among older Americans.

Many doctors soon rebelled against approval, refusing to prescribe it to their patients, while Medicare decided to severely restrict its coverage of the drug. Biogen eventually gave up trying to make Aduhelm a thing, after years of poor sales, and pulled the drug from the market in early 2024.

At least this saga has a happy ending. Other similar drugs have been developed and approved in recent years, and unlike Adohelm, these drugs appear to have a real, albeit modest, effect on treating the condition.

3. Purdue Pharma and OxyContin

Purdue Pharma has become perhaps the most famous example of the opioid crisis.

Its blockbuster drug, OxyContin, helped fuel rising rates of opioid use disorder after its public release in 1996. Although there were several drivers of the crisis, including the proliferation of more potent agents like fentanyl in subsequent years, the company eventually admitted to downplaying the risk of addiction to its products, paying illegal kickbacks to doctors for prescribing their drugs, and turning a blind eye to the widespread diversion of its drugs from pharmacies to the black market.

After a glut of civil and federal lawsuits over OxyContin, Purdue Pharma closed its doors, and its sole owners — the Sacklers — agreed to pay more than $4 billion as part of a far-reaching settlement in 2021. The courts raised that amount to $6 billion in 2023. However, this settlement also provided immunity from further civil charges against the Sacklers themselves. Although the situation has finally begun to improve recently, nearly 50,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses last year.

4. Martin Shkreli’s drug prices rise

Sometimes the scandals are not about the drugs themselves, but about the purpose for which they are sold.

In 2015, Martin Shkreli became public enemy number one when his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought the anti-parasitic and HIV drug Daraprim, raising its $13.50-per-pill price by more than 5,000%. Shkreli’s arrogant and unrepentant attitude toward his many critics has earned him the nickname “Brother Pharma.”

Ironically, his initial downfall had nothing to do with Daraprim. Shortly after his fame, federal prosecutors in New York charged Shkreli with securities fraud, and in 2017, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in federal prison.

Although Shkreli was released early in 2022, his company’s management of Daraprim later came back to haunt him. In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission and others sued the company, now called Vyera Pharmaceuticals after Shkreli’s imprisonment, alleging that it implemented an “elaborate anticompetitive scheme” to maintain its monopoly on the drug. The company reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission a year later, and the legal battle eventually required Shkreli himself to pay a $64 million fine and step away from the drug industry altogether. In 2023, Vyera declared bankruptcy and sold its rights to Daraprim. Last year, the US Supreme Court rejected Shkreli’s attempt to overturn the personal fine and ban imposed on him.

However, don’t feel bad for Shkreli. Since his release from prison, he’s been busy trying to get rid of WebMD’s cryptocurrency and AI knockoffs.

5. Abbott contaminated infant formula

In early 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration warned families to stay away from some Abbott Nutrition infant formula formulas. It turned out that the products were contaminated with Cronobacter bacteria.

Several children were hospitalized, and two infants who ingested these products later died. Abbott issued a widespread recall of its products and closed its formulations production facility in Sturgis, Michigan. The FDA investigation concluded that Abbott failed to maintain sanitary conditions and that the facility had at least eight recent cases of Cronobacter contamination dating back to 2019.

It would take four months for the company’s Sturgis plant to reopen, following an agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to overhaul its safety practices, the duration of which helped contribute to a nationwide formula shortage that year. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have also criticized the FDA for its delayed response to the crisis, since the agency first learned of potential problems as early as September 2021.

Although there have been no similar recalls or outbreaks since then, a comprehensive ProPublica report in April 2025 interviewed workers who claimed the Sturgis plant still faces serious safety and health risks to this day. An employee reported what he found to the FDA, but it is unclear whether the new Trump administration will take action.

6. Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos

Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos in 2003. It centered around developing a device aimed at making blood testing easier than ever before. Holmes claimed that through a few drops of blood from a single finger prick, her company’s “Edison” device can accurately detect a series of health conditions. By the mid-2000s, Holmes’ marketing of Theranos had allowed her to become a darling of the biotech world: a young, self-made entrepreneur in the mold of Steve Jobs, who at one point was worth nearly $5 billion.

The problem, as the world eventually discovered, was that it was all based on lies. Beginning in late 2015, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou exposed the fraudulent practices of Holmes and Theranos. Although Holmes partnered with retail chain Walgreens in 2013 to provide the Edison device to its customers, Edison was never able to do what Holmes claimed it could do. Eventually, the company secretly turned to using other commercially available machines to perform most of its blood testing services.

Holmes’ deception not only misled investors; Many people reported that false test results provided by Theranos made them fearful of contracting medical conditions they did not already have, such as HIV, or harming their health.

Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors and other Theranos charges in 2022 and was sentenced to 11 years in prison (later reduced by two years), while her executive partner and romantic partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison the following month. As of this year, she has returned to social media (by having someone else spread her words).