The Company that Is Taking Over Monsanto Knowingly Gave Thousands of Children HIV

 The Big Pharma giant Bayer has just won approval from the US Justice  Department for the $62.5 billion dollar takeover of the agrichemical  behemoth Monsanto. 

The deal, which was solidified on Tuesday, has many  people on edge knowing that Bayer, a company with a sordid history of  corruption is merging with Monsanto, the company who has made an empire  with its pesticide, herbicide, and genetically-engineered seed empire. 

As DW reports,  as part of Bayer’s agreement with US antitrust enforcers, the German  firm will be required to divest some $9 billion in assets. 

Regulators  said they directed Bayer to sell off its entire cotton, canola, soybean  and vegetable seeds businesses, as well as its digital farming business.  It will also sell its Liberty herbicide, which competes directly with  Monsanto’s product RoundUp. Prior to this sell off of assets, government regulators voiced their  fears that the merger of these two companies would hamper competition  and be a detriment to both farmers and consumers. 

Although Bayer’s asset  sales were the largest divestiture ever required by the United States,  some concerns over this monopoly are still alive, and rightfully so. Though Bayer established its  reputation for the invention of aspirin, a more nefarious incident  involving an HIV-contaminated drug to be administered to children  suffering from hemophilia proved the corporation’s practices aren’t as  noble as it would have the public believe. 

In 1984, Bayer’s Factor VIII, used in  the treatment of hemophilia, became contaminated with HIV — which the  company became alerted to after a number of children became infected. In  full awareness  its medicine was tainted — and unable to sell Factor VIII in its  compromised state inside the U.S. — Bayer asked for and received  permission from federal regulators to sell the affected batch to  Argentina, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore after February  1984. 

According to documents obtained by the New York Times,  Bayer unit Cutter Biologic continued selling the tainted medicine  despite knowing the potentially life-threatening risks to the children  who would receive it. Cutter maintained in a written statement to the Times it had “behaved responsibly, ethically and humanely.” 

The result of this sale of HIV tainted medication infected tens of  thousands and killed thousands. 

Thousands of innocent children and  adults have died at the hand of this corporation and no punitive action  has ever been taken against them. On the contrary, the health department  leaders who accepted the tainted drugs in Argentina, Indonesia, Japan,  Malaysia, and Singapore were all imprisoned, while the FDA continues  down its hellish path. 

When asked about the sale of the tainted Factor VIII years later, Bayer responded, ”Decisions  made nearly two decades ago were based on the best scientific  information of the time and were consistent with the regulations in  place.” 

With the revolving door that is the FDA, the government was complicit  in this conspiracy which is why no one was held accountable, in spite  of all the deaths. 

“These are the most incriminating internal pharmaceutical industry documents I have ever seen,” said Dr. Sidney M. Wolf, director of the Public Citizen Research Group. 

On the other side of this mega deal  is Monsanto, who is responsible for poisoning the world’s waterways and  ecosystems with a known probable human carcinogen, glyphosate — the  hallmark ingredient in its herbicide, RoundUp.  

Internal company documents revealed  in 2015, that Monsanto had tested RoundUp for potential toxicity for  years but used the guise of proprietary information to force the  Environmental Protection Agency into sealing those records. They knew it  was dangerous but deliberately covered up their findings and brought  the product to market anyway. 

Independent research scientist,  Anthony Samsel, obtained the documents through his senator’s office  after having his Freedom of Information Act requests successfully  thwarted for years. As he described from information found in those  documents, “Monsanto misrepresented the data and deliberately covered up data to bring [glyphosate] to the market.”  

Indeed, it has been Monsanto’s own skewed and faulty research on glyphosate that has allowed its approval for use on food crops by the FDA and EPA. Monsanto’s body of falsified research and its willful poisoning of  the human population on the altar of profit are tantamount to crimes  against humanity. Given Bayer’s equally corrupt and deadly history, the  idea of these two companies merging their power and influence is  chilling, to say the least. 

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