J&J Discs Face Backlash

Of course, Johnson & Johnson itself has been busy marketing its new offering as well. The company is currently targeting orthopedic surgeons, including Rosen, with offers of specialized training courses.

As soon as the implants won FDA approval, in fact, the company was already pledging to intensively train orthopedic surgeons -- at sites all over the country -- so that they could begin doing the new operations as soon as possible.

But Rosen, for one, will not be among them.

"I think there are going to be thousands and thousands of people who suffer failures and wind up in chronic pain with no solution for it," he says. "I don't know how anyone, in good conscience, could put these things in knowing the past history and the potential for so many failures. ... It's just money over everything else, and it's just cruel."