Drucker on Marketing: Lessons from the World's Most Influential Business Thinker

Chapter 22Integrity Is Critical to Marketing

In the 1980s, someone in Chicago laced a popular over-the-counter pain killer medication with cyanide. Seven customers who bought the poisoned product died. This resulted in nationwide panic. One hospital received 700 queries from people suspecting that they had been poisoned with the tainted product. People in cities across the country were admitted to hospitals on suspicion of cyanide poisoning. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigated 270 incidents of suspected product tampering. While some of the products had been tampered with, although not poisoned, in most cases this was pure hysteria with no basis at all in fact. However, as panic set in, some state health departments banned all ...