This is the first in a series of articles about drug companies and the fraud that pervades their clinical studies, advertising and sales. I started out with Bayer because it has one of the worst company histories. It goes back to the late 1800’s.
I might note here that Bayer did not apologize to the Jews for their part in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jews until 1995. The apology was issued by Hlge Wehmeier, the head of Bayer Corporation to Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel who was supposed to lecture there. Elie Wiesel’s mother and sister were killed in the gas chambers by the gas that Bayer helped manufacture. When Mr Wiesel cancelled his lecture, Hlge Wehmeier agreed to issue a public apology. Mr. Wiesel accepted it with grace. The war ended in 1945……50 years later Bayer finally owned up.
Bayer and Its Foundation:
Bayer AG was founded in Germany in 1863 by Friedrich Bayer and Johann Friedrich Weskott.
Its first addition to human misery and addiction was heroin.
In the late 1800’s opium was banned in most of the West. Bayer was actually looking for a cough medicine that was not addictive like morphine and codeine that could relieve pain. They needed a new drug.
Bayer’s Marketing Of Addicting Heroin.
Heroin was actually first created in 1874 by a British chemist named Alder Wright working at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London. Wright did nothing with the formula.
This same formula was later re-synthesized by chemist, Felix Hoffman, twenty years later. Felix Hoffman worked at Aktiengesellschaft Farbenfabriken (now Bayer) in Elberfeld, Germany. In his experiments to produce codeine, he accidently created a new form of Morphine, more than twice as addictive. which was heroin.
Heroin’s Addictive Properties Were Known By Bayer Before Marketing.
Bayer marketed heroine from 1898 through 1910. It was named that because those testing the drug felt heroic and brave. It was marketed to the world as a cough medicine that was non-addictive. Heroine rapidly metabolizes into morphine. This is where the lies and deception begin.
By 1899, Bayer was producing a ton of heroin and making lots of money.They sold it to doctors all over the world. It was advertised in every medical journal and was exported to 23 countries including the United States. You could buy it over the counter in drug stores like aspirin today. They gave away free samples.
The FDA gives approval. What’s wrong with this picture?
The AMA gave heroin approval in 1907 knowing it was addictive. The reports of addiction were realized shortly after its introduction into the market in 1899. You have to wonder about the AMA ethics even then. There were thousands of people already addicted to heroin by this point.
The creation of its signature product, Bayer Aspirin
Bayer’s most famous product Aspirin was released into the market, a year after Heroin. By 1899 Aspirin was registered worldwide for Bayer’s brand of acetylsalicylic acid. This was originally derived from Willow bark in 1853 by Charles Grederic Gerhardt.
Bayer retires from heroin sales just in the nick of legal timing.
Bayer stopped selling heroin in 1913, fourteen years after introducing it into the market. That was about the time they saw the writing on the wall that it would be made illegal by the government. In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was passed making heroin and other drugs derived from Opium illegal except by prescription. In 1924 heroin and morphine were banned from manufacture and sale.
This was after creating millions of addicts by giving it out freely. This was even given to children. Bayer knew that heroin was addicting before ever releasing it. They lied to doctors and medical journals when first introducing it, saying it was NOT addicting like morphine and Cocaine. Lies and fraud.
Bayer loses some of its power after World War 1
After World War I (1914 to 1918), Bayer’s US name, assets and trademarks were taken by the US government as part of the reparations. It lost its trade mark in the US, France, and UK. In Germany and some 80 other countries, it is still a registered trademark of Bayer. Bayer’s asset and trademarks from the US were acquired by Sterling Drugs.
How Bayer participated in the killing of the Jews during World War 11.
The Bayer Company then joined IG Farben, a group of many German chemical companies that became the financial core of the German Nazi regime. This is where the real evil begins.
IG Farben manufactured the Zykon B gas which was used in the gas chambers to exterminate the Jews in Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
The Bayer Company employed slave labor in their factories attached to the extermination camps.
When the war with Germany was won, IG Farben was split into several pieces by the Allies for their involvement in Nazi war crimes.
Bayer executive, Fritz ter Meer, was sentenced to 7 years in prison in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Later after he was released, he became supervisory head of Bayer in 1956.
Bayer recaptures its world wide power.
After World War 11, Bayer reappeared as an individual business.
In 1978, Bayer bought up Miles Laboratories including their lines of products such as Alka-Seltzer, One-A-Day Vitamins, and Flintstone Vitamins. They eventually bought their trademarks and name back from Sterling Winthrop Labs.
Bayer sells contaminated blood plasma in the 1980’s and gets away with it for years.
In around the late 1980’s Bayer sold contaminated blood plasma infected with AIDS to hemophiliacs in Asia for over a year. They had already introduced a safer, heated blood plasma version to Europe and the United States in 1984. Evidence obtained by New York Times investigators, shows they sold the infected plasma knowingly so they would not lose profit on the product. Thousands of hemophiliacs were infected with HIV. Argentina was sold 300,000 units; 400,000 went to the Far East; and hundreds of thousands went to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
FDA Covers up Bayer’s Illegal and Immoral Sales which is responsible for many deaths.
In 1985, FDA director, Dr. Harry Meyer, helped Bayer to cover up this act. Meyer suggested that the issue should be “quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public.”
This cover up was revealed by the New York Times through investigation. They broke this news on national television.
This shows you how a drug company can be involved in death and fraud yet eventually emerge with power and money. Its evil past is lost in history and memory except for the Jews whose families died in the Holocaust and Asian hemophiliacs who are dead now. Its reputation is now shinning to most Americans who have no idea of its involvement in the introduction of heroin and its part in killing many thousands of Jews. If you are addicted to heroin or have family who is, you can thank Bayer for this deadly addictive drug.
References:
http://www.disinfo.com/2010/03/the-bayer-company-made-heroin/
http://dotconnectoruk.blogspot.com/2010/01/bayer-aspirin-illuminated-nazis-and.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1995/12/21/1995-12-21_bayer_sorry_for_nazi_role.html
www.ahrp.org/infomail/0503/22.php
