BAYER
"Science For A Better LifeTM."
In seeking to arouse everyone’s enthusiasm to contribute to Bayer’s success, we aim to impart one thing above all else: the fascination that is Bayer.
Corporate Headquarters:
Bayerwerk, Gebäude W11,
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee
51368 Leverkusen
Germany
Tel. +49 214 30 1
Company Web Site:
www.bayer.com
CEO:
Werner Wenning
COMPANY HIGHLIGHTS: (this is just a small glimpse)
*1863 Bayer founded by dye salesman Friedrich Bayer and Friedrich Weskott. Bayer names company after himself.
*1898 introduced heroine as a cough medicine "without side-effects" and marketed the drug for decades in spite of the well-known dangers of addiction.
*1914-1918 Invented "Chemical Warfare" ("moisture gas") and built up " A School for Chemical Warfare."
*1920s-1940s was part of the Nazi chemical giant I.G. Farben with BASF and Hoechst (today Aventis). During the second world war I.G. Farben launched chemical weapons such as xylyl bromide tear gas, chlorine gas, phosogene gas and mustard gas (who's derivatives would later become the foundation for chemotherapy drug treatments).
According to the Berkeley Citizen, "Nazi SS Captain Helmuth Vetter, “who ran medical trials for Bayer at Auschwitz and Mauthausen and possibly other camps.” Ran experiments that involved injecting prisoners with typhus, and then trying out various drugs to see if they would effect a cure. According to witnesses, almost all of the inmates died. Another author, Hermann Langbein, who survived Auschwitz, writes, “Bayer constantly sent him new preparations whose effects Vetter was supposed to try out on prisoners.” Josiah Dubois describes a camp survivor who testified to seeing a letter on Bayer letterhead arguing about the cost of purchasing 150 Ukranian women for the purpose of experimentation."
*1936 invented by Dr. Gerhard Schrader at the Bayer facilities, the neurotoxin Tabun was part of a research project identifying insecticides. It's toxicity lead researchers to report it's potency to the German government as a chemical weapon. Dr. Schrader also went on to discover the nerve gas sarin, and the insecticides bladan and parathion E 605.
*1953 invents polycarbonates that are later used in Legos.
*1956 elects Fritzter Meer, guilty of mass murder, to head Bayer's supervisory board.
*1978 Joseph Borkin publishes "The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben" outlining IG Farben's role in supporting the Nazi regime. The author dies under mysterious circumstances before he is abe to start his book tour.
*1982 exposed for its involvement in the development and production of chemical weapon VX for the US Army.
*1985 found responsible for the "salad oil scandal" in Spain, which cost thousands of people their lives and health.
*1986 finally stopped dumping highly toxic diluted acid in the North Sea after several years of protest.
*1986 Bayer suspended from Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry because it had offered doctors money for made up drug trials.
*1988 found to be exploiting and depriving Latin American workers of their rights.
*1988 Bayer and Miles investigated by Justice department for illegal research practices. A Miles doctor, Mr. Kostas, had falsified records and fabricated patients in connection with an experimental urinary tract drug.
*1990s Bayer's Baysiston, the number one pesticide on the market, has poisoned hundreds of coffee growers, at least 30 fatally, in Brazil. Bayer had contacted hospitals to warn them not to blame "Baysiston intoxication" on official death certificates.
*1990s Bayer sues a watchdog group, the 'coalition against Bayer Dangers' for maintaining a Bayerwatch.com web site. In a case against the group that lasted 5 years, the German Supreme Court ruled in favor of the watchdog group.
*1991 According to the New York Times the Bayer pesticide “parathion has poisoned more than 650 field workers in the U.S., including at least 100 who died.”
*1991 Bayer’s subsidiary Mobay fined $4.7 million by the Environmental Protection Agency for violations.
*Regularly breaches the Food and Agriculture Organization's code of conduct - which it has signed - stipulating which pesticides should only be sold to certified professionals and not to the general public.
*1992 Bayer's subsidiary Chrome Chemicals in Durban, South Africa found negligent of severely dangerous working conditions.
*1995 promised to withdraw its most toxic pesticides, but, by 2002 had yet to do so. They still sell pesticides rated 'extremely' or 'highly' hazardous by the WHO.
*1998 the company admitted foreknowledge in selling HIV-tainted blood clotting products which infected thousands of hemophiliacs.
*1998-2001 Bayer's genetically modified rice LL601 escapes from field experiments to contaminate one-third of America's rice. Rice LL601 had been banned by the FDA for human consumption. It is now present on the shelves of Aldi Nord, a major German supermarket. Germany imports 25% of their rice from the US. Bayer is now being sued by US rice farmers.
*2000 PPL Therapeutics, the leading company in cloning and behind the famous cloned sheep Dolly, will be backed by Bayer for its sheep milk drug drug treatment for emphysema and cystic fibrosis. The treatment is produced from milk from genetically modified sheep.
*2001, Germany's health minister accused Bayer of concealing research documenting Baycol's lethal side effects It's drug, Lipobay/Baycol (cholesterol reducing drug) led to the death of 100 patients.
*2001 During the anthrax crisis, they tried to sell overpriced antibiotics to the American government.
*2001 Bayer agreed to pay 14 million dollars to 45 states for allegations that the company caused physicians and other health officials to submit fraudulently inflated reimbursement claims to the state and federally funded Medicare program.
*2001 Bayer pesticide LEBAYCID recalled in Australia. Banned in Greece.
*2002 buys Aventis Cropscience (the agricultural arm of Aventis).
*2002 Third largest manufacturer of herbicides globally.
*2003 French Comité Scientifique et Technique (CST) publishes a report that shows that the use of Bayer's insecticide GAUCHO (containing the active ingredient Imidacloprid), is jointly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of bee colonies. France bans it's use on sweet corn and sunflowers.
*2003 Develops project at the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park that will produce 100,000 tons per year of polycarbonate, 80,000 tons per year of polyurethane, and 30,000 tons a year of HDI. These products will be used for Makrolon¨ which is used in the manufacture of CDs, DVDs, automotive glazing and in the construction industry: like in the roof of the Tianjin Olympic Center Stadium.
*2005 traces of "Topas," a Bayer product were found in traditional colza.
Responsible for the worse contamination in Australian history of GMs.
*2006 Bayer was faulted by FDA for not revealing the existence of a commissioned retrospective study of 67,000 patients that concluded that Traylol carried greater risks then other anti-fibrinolytics.
*2006 Europe bans antibiotics and related drugs to livestock for growth promotion purposes. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimate that 70% of all antibiotics in the US are used on healthy pigs, poultry and cattle. The American Medical Association has publicly demanded a stop to the use of antibiotics in agriculture for healthy animals. (Bayer is a major producer of antibiotics.) When the FDA proposed a ban on fluroquinolene antibiotics for treating poultry because of its contribution to antibiotic resistance, Bayer requested a formal hearing, delaying the ban by years.
2007 Over 200 individual lawsuits against Bayer were consolidated into a single class action lawsuit representing thousands of US rice farmers.
Neither the FDA, nor Bayer Cropscience knows the cause or the source of the contamination. No one knows how field trials that finished over five years ago contaminated almost 30% of the US rice supplies.
*2008 700 beekeepers in Germany have filed damage reports after Poncho, a Bayer seed treatment, linked bee deaths at 11,500 bee colonies in southwestern Germany.
Want to know more?
"The Devil's Chemist," by Josiah Dubois
"The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben," by Joseph Borkin
"Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
"The Cancer Industry" by Ralph W. Moss
PUBLIC RELATIONS/LOBBYING: (this is just a small glimpse)
*2009 Bayer ordered to run corrective advertising for one of its brands. The FDA and 27 state attorneys general order Bayer to produce a six-month, $20 million corrective-advertising campaign for Yaz, a birth-control pill. FDA rules that Bayer’s marketing and advertising for Yaz is deceptive and makes false claims regarding its efficacy for acne and premenstrual syndrome.
*Is the sponsor of the Leverkusen Football Team. The team competes at the Bayarena. The first ever McDonald's to be housed in a stadium in Europe was at Bayarena, but the fast food joint was closed for safety reasons.
*Sponsors the "Daily Telegraph Science Writer Awards." Similar writing awards are offered to Canadian university students who write to praise genetically modified crops or pesticide use.
*After working 14 years at Bayer AG and 7 years as a lobbyist for the European Chemical Industry Council, Uta Jensen-Korte moved to the REACH Unit of DG Enterprise and Industry.
Bayer, has financed German political parties since the 1920s. Several of its managers have become ministers in the German government.
*Bayer is a member of the European Table of Industrialists that effectively writes chunks of the EU corporate legislation. They also set up the Transatlantic Business Dialogue where US and European multinationals work together to influence policy in the direction of free markets and deregulation.
Recently, Bayer dished out 3,050 Euros a month to parliamentarian Karl Kress who labeled REACH a "job killer."
*During Bush's electoral campaign, Bayer forked over $120,000. In the past five years Bayer has bestowed $600,000 on US politicians.
Bayer's taxes declined from $1 billion in 2000 to 132 million in 2001. These generous tax cuts added up to more than 50 times the company's total philanthropic donations.
* Bayer and BASF signed up with the UN's "Global Compact" initiative (a partnership between the UN and multinationals), a voluntary, non-binding human rights and environmental principals, in exchange for the use of the UN name and logo. The UN, in turn, hopes to receive funding from the giant corporations. Using the good reputation of the United Nations to present a corporate humanitarian image without a commitment to changing real world behavior, Bayer and BASF were actually signed on for a dose of "bluewash."
