Senkaku islands, there’s pretty regular posturing from both sides over the ownership of a couple barren rocks since they have implications for territorial waters.
Japan, just like China, has disputes over several groups of “islands” with several of their neighbors (at least Russia, South Korea, China and Taiwan). A very small number of these islands are inhabited. But many are more or less just rocks that formed from underwater volcanoes. (Japan grows by a few more islands regularly due to those.)
The islands this is about are claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan. They hold strategic significance, but it’s mostly about suspected resources at the bottom of the sea.
I always find the most revealing map to give you an immediate view of the situation, to be that one the BBC made long ago, and keeps posting whenever this issue is brought back because of another incident. In blue, every country different claims. In red, China’s claim. https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/736f7d99-a393-40e7-a5ca-690c31b0255a.webp
And by all accounts it still has the same c-suite/management structure as before.
This “restructuring” was done in part to protect the whole when all the antitrust shit finally starts to roost. I’ll give their lawyers credit here, they foresaw the inevitability getting slammed with antitrust lawsuits, and now they can less painfully peel off the “offending” subsidiaries and blame them for any wrong doing instead of parent meta.
Plot twist: It’s totally still meta that’s dictating the evil, they aren’t fooling anyone, fuck their plausible deniability.
So an adult man possibly spent his legally earned wages buying legal homemade porn from another consenting adult man. How is this an outrage, Hew can do what he wants with his own money.
How so? If the alternative app stores where better all OEM’s would have flocked to it. Samsung would have completely dropped Google Play and would exclusively only support Galaxy Store. The only market where OEM’s use alternative app store is China, because Google doesn’t run Google Play in China. Android being open source means anyone can develop an app store and there is nothing stopping anyone. OEM’s continuing to use Google Play is because they get access to millions of apps and ad revenue from Google and none of the other app stores can provide that as of now, except in China.
First China has 1.4 billion people. It’s the biggest market for anything, including Android.
Second, every parallel appstore weakens Google’s monopoly.
Third, it’s not hard to develop an Appstore. The difficult part is to get people to use it. Bans are very effective in moving people to a new appstore :)
What does China having 1.4 billion people mean to Google? nothing, because they have chosen not to do business in that country. So the argument is moot. Even people in China who use VPN, install Google Play store on their phone to access banned apps in China. BTW there are 3 billion 30 day active android phones with Google Play. If you take biggest Android appstore in China it doesn’t even have 500 million 30 day active users.
LTL said the researchers concealed the fact that some or all of the patients involved in their studies had been exposed to asbestos from other sources.
If that’s true, it doesn’t look good for the researchers.
But at the same time, J&J has to hold some responsibility for having their “asbestos-contaminated consumer talc products” on store shelves!
On the one hand sure, that’s an issue. On the other hand, who hasn’t been in contact with asbestos in one way or the other. Asbestos has been banned for many use cases but it is still widely in circulation. It’s a bit like asking for people who have never been exposed to smoking.
My old school had it in the walls, my father's workshop had it in the rooftop, in the chimney insulation, etc. I'm pretty sure I haven't been in danger as I haven't built or torn anything of those down, but I for sure have been in contact.
I’m glad it hasn’t affected you and yours.
But the fact is that it does affect people.
Just to give anecdotes some empirical backing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos
And it should be pretty easy to get a group of people with same level of asbestos exposure who haven't used J&J's talc and compare the cancer % between the groups. That's where J&J should be focusing if they knew they were in the right.
But surprise, this is probably just throwing everything to discredit science.
And it should be pretty easy to get a group of people with same level of asbestos exposure who haven’t used J&J’s talc and compare the cancer % between the groups. That’s where J&J should be focusing if they knew they were in the right.
Yes, that’s how I’d do it.
Perhaps researchers did do this, and found that there was no difference, but decided not to publish that.
Who knows? But it sounds like J&J is confident that they can prove that researchers were hiding facts, or else that’s an incredibly pointed accusation!
Not a lawyer but do they have anything to lose with this suit?
If they make the accusation and lose, it would also be pretty bad for them. First, they would likely need to compensate the researchers for defamation, and second, they would look even worse to shareholders.
It's an incredible show but I can see it not being everyone's cup of tea. It's a bit depressing or absolute joy if you enjoy seeing the 0.1% squirm but either way it's interesting, unique and doesn't waste your time. And there's a comical relief but it doesn't offset the drama.
Perhaps researchers did do this, and found that there was no difference, but decided not to publish that.
Well hey if we are just gonna play “what if everything is a conspiracy” then maybe researchers found that Johnson and Johnson talc powder was actually sourced from Proxima Centauri but decided not to publish that little trade secret.
Materialistic conditions, we’ve been mentioning those words for 150 years.
If you were in a position where “I’d do it”, that means you’d be a high officer at J&J, you’d be a billionaire, or someone who loses their job if they don’t obey the billionaire. If you’re the employee you care about your job, or you get fired and someone else obeys them anyway, if you’re the billionaire you only care about your money
In the context of a researcher, “that’s how I’d do it” is basically for scientific integrity and due diligence in the methodology and design of the study.
I’d also add a control group who has never been exposed to talc or other known sources of asbestos to really be thorough.
But I get what you’re saying, and it’s sad that anyone would be in a position where making good choices would get them in trouble.
I say this as someone who hates corn starch based powder and goes out of his way to ensure his family jewels only receive the most succulent of asbestos/talc powders.
I hope J&J are right. But I am extremely skeptical. I also don’t like the chilling effect, as others have pointed out. Finally, they could be just trying to win in the court of public opinion. Never forget McDonalds hot coffee case.
It’s a pretty wild allegation. They would have to have known about the other sources of exposure and deliberately withheld that information. Even if the patients had had some other exposure, it’s even less likely that the doctors would have known about it, and their study will have been designed as well as practicable to find out.
My favourite example of this is when McDonalds sued Irish burger chain SuperMac’s for trademark infringement, only to lose their entire trademark for Big Mac’s across all of Europe.
This needs to happen to Monster Energy drink (who is suing everyone who uses the term “monster”) and Bethesda (who got lawsuit shot with the term “scroll”).
It really depends on the type of study it was, and what these sources of asbestos were supposed to have been.
If they were doing a comparison study, so long as the control group was exposed to asbestos in similar amounts and in similar environments, it's still a strong finding. J&J shouting "they were exposed to other asbestos!" would just be an empty attack on the researchers' characters, and an attempt to falsely discredit them to an uncritical and uneducated public.
Things do seem to be a bit more complicated than that, though, as these are post-hoc investigations with no control. That said, it looks like they tried to do their due diligence to filter out participants who had known environmental exposure to asbestos. If some of them lied or mis-remembered, then it's up to J&J to show that the researchers were negligent or operating in bad faith.
That's going to be a pretty big hurdle to climb. I don't believe they actually intend to climb it.
The fact that the researchers asked about environmental during recruitment, plus the fact that J&J is only claiming that a small handful of people involved in the study were exposed to other sources of asbestos, really shows this for what it is: An attempt to scare researchers away from doing research, and especially from agreeing to be provide expert testimony in lawsuits.
One of the defendants here even has a new paper out this past January that includes patients with known environmental exposure to asbestos, and they show that cumulative exposure from all sources matters. Including exposure from talc:
Conclusion
For individuals with exposure to asbestos through cosmetic talc usage and additional alternate sources, all exposures contribute to the development of mesothelioma. Published case reports and case series have identified over 100 individuals whose sole exposure to asbestos was through cosmetic talcum powder usage.
This finding basically cuts J&J's apparent argument off at the knees, and was published months before they ever filed suit. They'd have been aware of it at the time of filing. They don't seem to have anything here. Just the opportunity to try and make their detractors look as dirty as they are in the eyes of people who haven't read any of the research.
The wording is that “researchers concealed”, which is what they need to prove.
Keep in mind, it was that same research that cost them billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lawsuits, so anything to invalidate the original papers is going to benefit them.
This finding basically cuts J&J’s apparent argument off at the knees
It might be quite the opposite! The study itself concludes that “for individuals with mixed exposures to asbestos, all exposures should be considered”.
If J&J is saying what I think they are saying, then the researchers made these products look more harmful than they were, and included people who would have been harmed by other exposure to asbestos but concealed that fact in the study.
Either way, J&J did a horrible thing by having asbestos-laden products in the market. I’m not on their side at all, but I also don’t like bad science, so the outcome of this lawsuit will interest me regardless of who wins.
It might be quite the opposite! The study itself concludes that “for individuals with mixed exposures to asbestos, all exposures should be considered”.
Yes, but the study still shows that people with no environmental exposure still got cancer. It's still explicitly stating that talc exposure is asbestos exposure. If J&J's argument is that these researchers made their product look more dangerous than it is by including people with environmental asbestos exposure in their studies -- whether by accident, or for nefarious purposes -- and therefore creating a false link between talc and cancer, this paper side-steps that issue entirely by including people with and without known exposure, and showing that talc exposure is equivalent to environmental exposure.
If J&J is saying what I think they are saying, then the researchers made these products look more harmful than they were, and included people who would have been harmed by other exposure to asbestos but concealed that fact in the study.
Proving that they concealed this information would be difficult, I think, though it would be devastating not only to their bank accounts, but to their careers more generally. Emory, Maddox, and Kradin's study explicitly states:
One hundred forty subjects with documented exposures to cosmetic talc were initially reviewed. Exposures were identified through sworn deposition testimonies and answers to sworn interrogatories provided from subjects, parents, and spouses. Sixty-five subjects were excluded due to recalled occupational or paraoccupational exposures to other sources of asbestos.
So, that wouldn't even be a lie of omission. It would be straight academic malpractice. Their academic careers would be over.
Yes, but the study still shows that people with no environmental exposure still got cancer.
There’s no denying that asbestos in talc products cause cancer, but the argument is “to what extent”?
For instance, why doesn’t the study have a control group (i.e. no talc and no other exposure to asbestos)? That would at least give some idea of the risks from using talc compared to no talc use.
The way the study is set up, it’s like comparing smokers who had a pack a day vs those who had 1.5 packs a day. Where are the non-smokers?
It seems that the loser in this case would come out severely damaged: on one hand, you’ve got shareholders and a possible countersuit for defamation, and on the other hand you have a career ending outcome. I would hate to be either party!
It's true, the results are weaker than if they had done a comparison study, but a lot of medical research is just post-facto observation reports. Like, to do a proper double blind study here, you'd have to start with healthy people and then knowingly expose some of them to something you suspect may be a carcinogen.
That's not going to pass the ethics board.
You can look at people who have already gotten cancer and try to lump them into those who have used talc-based products and those who haven't, but then how do you actually measure the impact of the talc there? Do you look at the number of patients who did use talc-based products vs those who didn't? Those might just reflect the rate at which those products are used among different subsets of the population.
The key bit here is that the kind of cancer they're looking at -- mesothelioma -- is known to be caused by asbestos. It's also known that talcum powder contains asbestos. So, the observational link here is seeing whether people with mesothelioma have had known significant exposure to environmental asbestos and how much exposure they've had to talc-based products. And if you can see in your observations that higher or more prolonged exposure to talc is correlated with increased mesothelioma rates, and can assume that these people -- based on their own memories -- have not been exposed to environmental asbestos at a rate higher than any other average person, then environmental exposure becomes an independent factor and you can assert the correlation between talc exposure and cancer rates.
The complaint is here. Start on page 23 for the specifics. Basically, they’re saying the patients in the study were actually plaintiffs in other litigation, and it came out in that litigation that many were known to have been exposed to asbestos fibers in homes, schools, or workplaces.
Holy crap that was a crazy read. LTL, the North Carolina shell company owned by J&J, tragically lost sales revenue and went bankrupt "because of their 2020 study". "To set the record straight" they are de-anonymizing the data to dox 5 of the participants and then going through those cancer patient's lives to say that they had contact with industrial asbestos at some point. Their main claim against the only patient they have positively identified, Lanzo because he tried to sue J&J, is that his middle school locker room and basement later had asbestos pipes removed. Their claim against #2 after matching her tumor stats is that her dad worked with pipes that had asbestos. The third, again matched by tumor measurements, had a husband who once told a UCLA doc on a visit that he was doing some demolition that might've had asbestos. The fourth, "matched" only by her age, smoked and sued Kent cigarettes which were proven to contain asbestos. The last is an age match to a cleaning lady who sued J&J previously and said in court she cleaned buildings and navy ships that "possibly had asbestos".
Their claim is that since at least one patient might've come into contact with asbestos from a source that wasn't baby powder the entire study is false. Basically, they dig through peoples lives and if they ever visited somewhere that has any asbestos on record or lived with someone who mentioned asbestos worries to a doctor they think you should be disqualified from being linked to Johnson and Johnson.
Except that there were over 20 participants in the study and J&J is trying to claim potential, possible exposures to asbestos that they could only come up for 6 of them means that nothing in the study is correct.
That is a significantly high number as it is six ‘proved’ cases. Some people wouldn’t even know if they were exposed by other sources and even if they knew, would it be documented? Chances are we have all been exposed to asbestos and other carcinogenic chemicals both natural and man-made. The correlation was very weak to begin and it seems some of the people that did this study did willfully ignore details that make is suspect. I like to think all scientists are working on our behalf but there is a monetary motive to attain certain positive results in this case. We shouldn’t automatically give them a pass.
They don't automatically get a pass. They get peer reviewed.
It's also not one study. They've done multiple over the years, with hundreds of participants. They've done studies where they include people with known environmental exposure, and they still find that exposure to talcum powder counts as part of cumulative exposure.
Is it possible they're just flagrantly lying about their research results? Of course. Tell good enough lies and it becomes up to reproduction studies to find contradicting results. But there's as much money, if not more, to be found in finding those contradicting results, and yet...
exactly. J&J are the victims in this situation. People do not realise it yet. Most of those int he legal community know the real fault lies in the stupid lawyers that J&J used first time round. Lousy and shoddy.
This will probably settle out of court, the lawyers will get 1/2 the settlement and the thousands of employees involved will a few hundred bucks each. If that.
I’m sure this won’t have any chilling effects amongst the researchers who keep us all safe.
Edit to add that Johnson & Johnson is/was also trying to use patent loopholes to make sure poor people die from tuberculosis; until the internet got mad.
The secondary patent particularly irked some advocates because the drug’s development was largely underwritten by public funds, according to a 2020 analysis. That study found public sector funds contributed $455 million to $747 million to getting bedaquiline to market, compared to $90 million to $240 million from J&J.
We pay for the development of the drug, they get the patent, then we pay for the drug. Socialize cost, privatize profits.
most of the hype about danger from talcum powder is quite fake. the link between cancer and the powder is hugely tenuous and the researchers are quite shameful. Poor J&J are being victimised when there are millions sufferring from the absence of their valuable and safe talcum powder,
reuters.com
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