Medical Device Daily Executive Editor

Executives at Johnson & Johnson (New Brunswick, New Jersey) may be secretly or not-so-secretly, smiling to themselves today.

In 2005, J&J opted out of the bidding competition with Boston Scientific (Natick, Massachusetts) to acquire Guidant (Indianapolis), Boston Sci paying $27 billion for the cardiac rhythm management (CRM) company and rolling up $9 billion in debt.

And J&J's smile may be accompanied by a sigh of relief as it watches a multiplicity of problems as fallout from the Guidant deal.

On the other hand, J&J may not be focusing much on the issues of other companies since it is facing quite a few difficulties of its own.

J&J acknowledged this week that federal prosecutors have issued to it subpoenas seeking information concerning marketing of three of its top-selling drugs: Risperdal, an antipsychotic; Topamax, an epilepsy and migraine treatment; and Natrecor, a heart failure therapy.

The company issued the pro forma assurances that it is cooperating with the investigations.

These concerns add to other recent developments and investigations on the device side.

Like Boston Scientific, J&J earlier this month received a letter from the House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform concerning the off-label uses of its drug-coated stent, the Cypher, made by its subsidiary Cordis (Miami Lakes, Florida) (Medical Device Daily, March 7, 2007).

And last month the company reported telling the Department of Justice and The Securities and Exchange Commission that it was looking into the possibility that some overseas subsidiaries had made "improper payments in connection with the sale of medical devices in two small-market countries."

The company said that, as a result, its worldwide chairman for medical devices, Michael Dormer, acknowledged his responsibility for any problems as head of these operations and that he had stepped down from that position (MDD, Feb. 14, 2007).