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For several decades, Johnson & Johnson has been the exemplar of superb ethical behavior in light of the prompt and effective actions it undertook during the 1982 Tylenol cyanide poisoning incident.  Now several decades later, J&J's Consumer Product Division has put the company in jeopardy by its slow and ineffective response to a series of ongoing problems that center on inadequate quality control inside some of its plants and allegedly overly aggressive (and at times, illegal) marketing.  This article uses a model to examine the ethics of what has occurred in recent times.

Johnson & Johnson; business ethics; marketing