Bloomberg has a long article with details: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baby-powder-cancer-la....

Relevant quote:

> In the 1990s a toxicologist named Alfred Wehner worked as an outside consultant for J&J. His official role was to help evaluate the research on ovarian cancer and talc and advise the company on its response. Unofficially, he was its scold. Wehner was on J&J’s side, but he was concerned that a cosmetics trade group (partly funded by the company) was mischaracterizing the scientific case for talc. “A true friend is not he who beguiles you with flattery but he who discloses to you your mistakes before your enemies discover them,” Wehner began a 1997 letter to Michael Chudkowski, J&J’s manager of preclinical toxicology. Wehner described statements on talc research from the group as inept, misleading, and outright false. Referring to a statement a few years earlier, he wrote: “At that time there had been about 9 studies (more by now) published in the open literature that did show a statistically significant association between hygienic talc use and ovarian cancer. Anybody who denies this risks that the talc industry will be perceived by the public like it perceives the cigarette industry: denying the obvious in the face of all evidence to the contrary.” He wanted the trade group to argue that the studies’ biological significance was questionable.

The UK National Health Service has a recent overview of the study that was used as evidence associating talc with ovarian cancer. They come to the conclusion that while there is some evidence of an association, there is as yet no firm evidence proving causation: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/03March/Pages/Talc-and-ovarian-c...

That article helpfully links the paper itself, which is happily is available to read in full: http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Citation/2016/05000/The_Assoc...

Glancing at it, it seems like a very professional writeup, with many appropriate disclaimers about possible confounders. The key statistic that I have not been able to find in the paper (although I presume it's in there somewhere) is the incidence rate of ovarian cancer among the 1000 control subjects. SEER says (http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/ovary.html) that 1.3% of women will be diagnosed with ovary cancer during their lives.

Since the control subjects haven't lived their entire lives, and since diagnosis is mostly in older women (age 63), I'd guess that they'd have only something like fewer than 10 subjects on the control side with ovarian cancer. I think this means that if by chance there happened to 2 or 3 more subjects with cancer on the control side, the 1.3 increase in risk would be reversed, and thus the evidence is extremely weak! Or am I wrong, and there is some way of determining the odds ratio without knowing the true incidence rate among the controls?

My personal take: a demonstration that the burden of proof in a scientific (or technological) sense is very different from the burden of proof in a legal sense.

i wonder what such high punitive damages (10x actual assigned) are for. It implies that J&J knowingly did something wrong like a tobacco company.

Why are there so many separate actions? Seems somewhat inefficient and the exact scenario for which the class action was designed

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umm use the one made from cornstarch not talc.