John Green vs. Johnson & Johnson (part 1)

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is special. When we heard that widely-beloved writer John Green was rallying his online community around a fight over drug prices — and apparently making a difference — we were pumped. And this story took us in so many different directions: Literally around the world, and then straight back home.

The drug in question is bedaquiline, made by Johnson & Johnson. It treats drug-resistant tuberculosis, and its price has been a huge obstacle to getting it to places it’s needed most — primarily places far away from the U.S.

But the reason this TB drug costs so much overseas is also one of the main reasons that important drugs here are so expensive — drugs like insulin, Humira and… well, just about everything:

Legalistic patent games that pharma companies have mastered.

So, in addition to John Green — and yes, we talked with John Green — we also talked with one of the world’s leading experts on drug-patent games, Tahir Amin.

Also, John Green is a great storyteller. So hearing him tell the story of how he became obsessed with tuberculosis is bittersweet.

And in order to make sense of any of this, we had to dig into the story of how John Green and his brother Hank became (and remain) YouTube superstars.

For more than 16 years, they’ve been building a community of “nerdfighters” — nerds fighting to make the world a better place. It’s a profoundly sweet and fun story, and everything we’re trying to do here owes them a debt.

Oh, finally: This is, as you’re probably guessing by now, an epic story. It’s gonna take two full episodes of An Arm and a Leg to tell it all.

So, we hope you enjoy part one. There’s more coming in a few weeks.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there. A little while ago, I got to talk with this widely beloved dude.
0:05.2	My name is John Green and I'm a writer and YouTuber.
0:09.9	Now, John Green writer may be the most likely to ring a bell.
0:13.8	His best-known book, The Fault in Our Stars sold millions of copies, became a movie.
0:19.2	But before he was such a big deal as a writer, he and his brother Hank were a big deal on YouTube.
0:25.4	And they still are. We'll get into the details of that a little bit later.
0:28.5	But for now, the thing to know is, pretty recently, John Green got on the main YouTube channel
0:34.3	he and his brother share and started talking to hundreds of thousands of people about
0:38.9	how the drug maker Johnson & Johnson was using legalistic drug patent games to deny access to
0:46.8	life-saving tuberculosis medicine to millions of people in poor countries.
0:52.1	And John Green wanted anybody listening to stand up and do something about it.
0:56.8	Tell your friends about this injustice, tell your family, tell the internet because the only reason
1:01.2	Johnson & Johnson executives think they can get away with this is that they think we aren't paying
1:06.4	attention in the part of the world where they sell most of their products, their band-aids,
1:11.7	their Tylenol, their history. And a lot of the people who watch John Green's videos,
1:16.4	the folks in this community called themselves Nerdfighters, made a fair amount of noise.
1:22.1	And a few days later, Johnson & Johnson seemed to blink.
1:26.5	The company issued a statement saying it would allow a cheaper generic version of that
1:30.7	TB drug to be more widely distributed. Here's John's brother Hank from their next YouTube video.
1:36.5	And this happened in a week, John. You made a video on Tuesday. It's Friday right now.
1:41.5	I'm really proud to be a part of this community. I'm really proud to be your brother.
1:45.6	I mean, that is a super fun story that we're going to get into. How a self-proclaimed nerd
	...

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