Bayer, Johnson and Johnson and the Nazi Connection

[Sheri]

The Ten Worst Corporations of 2003
No Tobacco Companies Listed
By Michael I. Niman ArtVoice 2/5/04
Given recent history, it’s quite difficult to compile a “ten worst” list of corporations. In the eyes of many Americans, the word “corporation” itself has become synonymous with crime. In this age of unbridled greed, the notion of corporations conjures images of illegal dumping of toxic wastes, insider trading deals and deceptive accounting scams. We think of corporations as knowingly selling tainted products. We picture them using their financial clout to usurp democratic governance and force anti-environment anti-worker policies on the American public. And we picture them growing fat off of military contracts while stashing their booty in offshore tax havens while their cronies in Washington send American service personnel off to their deaths.
Picking the ten worse from this year’s contenders seems like a daunting task. Multinational Monitor magazine, however, has once again done just that, releasing its annual list of Wall Street’s most dastardly demon spawn. Founded by Ralph Nader in 1982, the not-for-profit magazine serves as a tool for disseminating research about corporations and corporate crime. It has since evolved into a guide to the global economy and a respected watchdog of corporate crime.
Their picks for the Ten Worst Corporations for 2003, in alphabetical order, are Bayer, Boeing, BrightHouse, Clear Channel, Diebold, Halliburton, HealthSouth, Inamed, Merrill Lynch and Safeway. What follows is a summation of my own research and that published by Multinational Monitor.

[Sheri]

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Bayer – Unrepentant Nazis?
The German-based multinational Bayer has had a busy year, pleading guilty to defrauding the Medicare system out of approximately $100 million dollars. Their scheme was both deliberate and complex, with the company providing the federal government with false pricing information for prescription drugs, preventing Medicare from obtaining current discount prices.
I use the term “busy year” instead of “bad year,” since Bayer doesn’t quite seem to be playing the convict role. Sure, they’ll be paying a fine and a settlement, but that’s it. Unlike your average bunko artist, Bayer won’t be seeing jail time for any of its executives. And unlike your more typical mob engaging in racketeering, Bayer’s organization isn’t being broken up. To the contrary, their year ended on good fortune with the new Bush prescription drug plan allowing them to more or less continue charging inflated drug prices, only now it’s legal. Bayer hasn’t had such good fortune since the anthrax scare, which saw sales of their Cipro vaccine soar.
Bayer also got busted this year by The Times of London for using British college students as guinea pigs in a rather crude pesticide study. Between 1998 and 2000, Bayer paid college students roughly $450 each to ingest their Baygon pesticide. When the students showed no short-term ill effects, Bayer argued that the British government should loosen restrictions on the use of pesticides. Most pesticide damage, however, is long term, including central nervous system damage, cancer and birth defects in offspring. This reality, of course, doesn’t bode well for the students involved in Bayer’s “study.” Antics like this make it hard to forget that Bayer’s parent company, I.G. Farben, was involved in similar acts of “science” carried out in Nazi-era concentration camps.
Bayer was also active this year settling lawsuits over deaths and injuries resulting from the use of their anti-cholesterol drug, Baycol. Especially embarrassing for the company was a New York Times piece documenting that they knew their drug was linked with causing a deadly muscle disorder, but kept it on the market none-the-less. In a similar story, The Times reported that Bayer knowingly sold a blood-clotting medication that was tainted with HIV+ blood cells in the mid 1980s, infecting hemophiliacs with AIDS. It turns out that they fixed the problem, but continued to sell the old tainted formula overseas until the supply ran out. Nice people.
Boeing made it on the list for the rather pedestrian crime of ripping off the federal government in the presence of winking regulators. In a recent case, the company leased 767 air-refueling tankers to the military. The catch was that it was more expensive for Uncle Sam to rent these war birds than it would have been to buy them. The Pentagon official who set the deal up, later went to work as an executive at Boeing. There were the regular announcements of resignations and firings, but Boeing, the company that ultimately profited from the deal, endured no punishment. The company is also accused of industrial espionage – stealing documents from rival military contractor, Lockheed Martin. It’s still a bit of a mystery why Multinational Monitor put Boeing on this list when hundreds of other government contractors engage in similar rip-offs. Perhaps it’s due to their involvement both as a major Bush campaign contributor and a major war profiteer.

[Kent]

Great post Sheri, keep on truckin girl :)