Big Pharma: A Wing of the Military Industrial Complex?

We're all well aware of the existence of the "military-industrial-[congressional]-complex", warned about by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell speech. The years since then have not seen the rise of this particular circuit of vested interests, but also the interlocking "Prison-Industrial-Complex", the "Surveillance-Industrial Complex", as well as what I am proposing now: "The Pharmaceutical-Industrial-Congressional Complex." I'll focus mainly on the ties between Big Pharma and the Bush administration, it's relevance to the current Swine Flu scare, and it's interlocking nature with the Military-Industrial-Complex. We'll begin with Monsanto.

Monsanto is

a United States-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as "Roundup". Monsanto is also the leading producer of genetically engineered (GE) seed; it sells 90% of the world's GE seeds.[1] It is headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri.[2]

Monsanto

Monsanto was founded in 1901 by John Francis Quenny, a notable pharmacist, and made it's first profits by manufacturing saccharin, an artificial sweetener, which it sold to the Cocoa-Cola company. By the 1940s it was one of the major producers of plastics and synthetic fibers in the US, as well as entering into it's first US government connections: Monsanto was chosen by Charles Thomas, who would become a president of Monsanto, to operate the Clinton Laboratories and to create nuclear triggers. At the Clinton Labs, now much more well known as the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Monsanto was involved in the development of nuclear weapons.

Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review: High Flux Years

In 1954 Monsanto entered a joint venture with the German chemical company bayer to form Mobay, aimed at the marketing of polyurethanes in the United States. Bayer, most known for the discovery of aspirin, was a company that formed part of the German industrial giant I.G. Farben, which was the chief military-industrial-complex of the Nazi regime:

The Bayer company then became part of IG Farben, a conglomerate of German chemical industries that formed a part of the financial core of the German Nazi regime. IG Farben owned 42.5% of the company that manufactured Zyklon B[citation needed], a chemical used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other extermination camps. During World War II, the company also extensively used slave labor in factories attached to large slave labor camps, notably the sub-camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp[2]. When the Allies split IG Farben into several pieces after World War II for involvement in organized Nazi war crimes, Bayer reappeared as an individual business. The Bayer executive Fritz ter Meer, sentenced to seven years in prison by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, was made head of the supervisory board of Bayer in 1956, after his release.

Bayer

One of the executives of Bayer, Fritz ter Meer, was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, yet was made the head of Bayer's supervisory board in 1956. At this time Bayer would be doing business with Monsanto, and the company continues on until today. According to the SourceWatch article on Bayer, Bayer gave $255,000 to federal candidates in the 2006 elections, 21% going to Democrats and 78% to Republicans. In that year Bayer also spent $3,192,969 on lobbying expenses in the United States.

For more on Bayer-Nazi war crimes, see Auschwitz:60 Year Anniversary - The Role of IG Farben-Bayer

With the already established connection between Bayer and I.G. Farben in the years leading up to and during World War II, and the connection between Bayer and Monsanto in the post-war years, it should not be very surprising that there are rumours of a 1967 joint-venture between Monsanto and IG Farben. However, I cannot confirm this and any help would be appreciated.

During the 1960s Monsanto became one of the producers of Agent Orange.

Agent Orange was manufactured by Monsanto, Dow Chemicals (manufacturers of napalm), Uniroyal, Hercules, Diamond Shamrock, Thompson Chemical and TH Agriculture. Monsanto [was] the main supplier. The Agent Orange produced by Monsanto had dioxin levels many times higher than that produced by Dow Chemicals, the other major supplier of Agent Orange to Vietnam.... Monsanto's involvement with the production of dioxin contaminated 2,4,5-T dates back to the late 1940s. 'Almost immediately workers started getting sick with skin rashes, inexplicable pains in the limbs, joints and other parts of the body, weakness, irritability, nervousness and loss of libido,' to quote Peter Sills, author of a forthcoming book on dioxins. Internal Monsanto memos show that Monsanto knew of the problems but once again a cover-up was the order of the day.... Operation Hades, later changed to Operation Ranch Hand, sprayed 6 million acres of forest in Vietnam, 19 million gallons of defoliant. The intention was to turn Vietnam into desert, to cause such destruction that Vietnam would never recover.... The most gruesome legacy caused by spraying Vietnam with dioxin contaminated Agent Orange was that born by the Vietnamese themselves. In a locked room of Tu Du Obstetrical and Gynaecological Hospital in Saigon are rows of formaldehyde-filled jars containing deformed foetuses, a grotesque illustration of Man's inhumanity to Man. The level of poverty in Vietnam prevents the preservation of further examples. Many of the living have fared little better, limb deformities, cancers.

The Legacy of Agent Orange

The Agent Orange spraying, known as "Operation Ranch Hand", lasted from 1962 to 1971. Not only did the people of Vietnam suffer, but countless US soldiers were exposed to the chemical during the spraying.

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[edit on 3-11-2009 by Someone336]

In 1982, Monsanto created the first genetically modified plant cell, giving birth to the ongoing debate over the ramifications of "Frankenfoods". Then, in 1985, Monsanto acquired a company called "G.D. Searle and Company", whose history we need to review.

Searle was founded in Nebraska in 1888 by Gideon Daniel Searle, and it's rise to fame happened in 1965 when one of their chemists, James Schlatter, was testing an anti-ulcer drug and discovered aspartame. Aspartame, also known as NutraSweet, is listed as a 'chemical poison' in the book Prescription for Nutritional Healing, consisting of aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol.

Aspartate and glutamate act as neurotransmitters in the brain by facilitating the transmission of information from neuron to neuron. Too much aspartate or glutamate in the brain kills certain neurons by allowing the influx of too much calcium into the cells. This influx triggers excessive amounts of free radicals, which kill the cells. The neural cell damage that can be caused by excessive aspartate and glutamate is why they are referred to as "excitotoxins." They "excite" or stimulate the neural cells to death.

Aspartic acid is an amino acid. Taken in its free form (unbound to proteins) it significantly raises the blood plasma level of aspartate and glutamate. The excess aspartate and glutamate in the blood plasma shortly after ingesting aspartame or products with free glutamic acid (glutamate precursor) leads to a high level of those neurotransmitters in certain areas of the brain.

Multiple illnesses can be caused by long-term exposure to excitatory amino acids include multiple sclerosis, ALS, epilepsy, alzheimer's, and many other hormonal and brain disorders.

Another ingrident of aspartame, methanol, is another deadly poison. Inside the human body it breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde, a known carcinogen and neurotoxin.

Source - Aspartame: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

In 1977, after helping build up the military industrial complex due to the "Soviet threat" through Team B in the Ford Administration, Donald Rumsfeld joined G.D. Searle, first as executive chief officer, then President, and finally Chairman. Rumsfeld would become part of President Reagan's transition team after Jimmy Carter, and was put in the position of FDA commissioner. These events led to the approval of aspartame by the FDA. Talk about a conflict of interest!

In 1985 Rumsfeld was the architect of the acquisition of Searle by Monsanto. He reportedly made $12 million from this sale. Perhaps the connection between Rumsfeld and Monsanto via Searle explains the connections between Monsanto and the Bush administration, which we will look at now. It's a bit of a stretch, but it might be noteworthy to consider this small fact about George W.'s grandfather, Prescott Bush:

While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

The industrial build up in Germany prior to WW2 rubs shoulders with IG Farben.

The connections between Monsanto and the Bush administration are numerous, starting with their large campaign contributions to his campaign. We've already seen the Rumsfeld connection, and it is most certaintly interesting to note that Clarence Thomas, who Bush Sr. elected to the Supreme Court, was a Monsanto lawyer who would be essential in Bush Jr.'s selection by the Republican party to run for president. Bush Jr. appointed Linda J. Fisher, a former Vice President of Monsanto and Monsanto lobbyist, to second in command of the EPA. Bush's Secretery of Agriculture, Anne Veneman, was a Monsanto employee.

The connections also run deeper. George Poste, appointed to head of the bioterrorism division of the Department of Homeland Security by Bush, sat on the Board of Directors of Monsanto. Another DHS employee is Michael Friedman, who became a Monsanto employee in June of 1999.

Back in 1996 when Dr. John Olney (founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity, and attempted to stop the approval of aspartame with Attorney James Turner) made world news on the aspartame/brain tumor connection he was on 60 Minutes. Michael Friedman knowing full well the main reason the FDA [had] refused to allow aspartame on the market for 16 years was the brain tumors, got on 60 Minutes and defended Monsanto by saying aspartame did not cause brain tumor

-quoted from a letter written by Betty Martini, an anti-aspartame activist, to Joseph Biden. Aspartame Gate: When Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle

In 2000, Monsanto was merged with the company known as Pharmacia. Sitting on the board of directors of Pharmacia, overseeing the merger, was one Frank Carlucci, a chairman of the RAND corporation and affiliated with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose other members include Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. He was President Reagan's National Security Advisor in 1987 and Secretery of Defense from 1987-1988. He is also a member of the Carlyle Group.

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The Carlyle Group, headquartered in Washington D.C., was established in 1987 as a "private global investment firm that originates, structures and acts as lead equity investor in management-led buyouts, strategic minority equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations and buildups, and growth capital financings," according to its website. [3] Cofounded by William Conway, Jr.

Carlyle states that its "mission is to become the premier global private equity firm and to generate extraordinary returns while maintaining our good name and the good name of our partners. Toward that end, we have established a family of funds in the Carlyle name and a network of offices around the world. We maintain the highest standards of ethical conduct and employ a conservative, proven and disciplined approach to investing."[4]

The senior advisor to Carlyle is George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush is a 'financial associate'. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Colin Powell have all done business with the Carlyle Group. Richard Perle, affiliated with the PNAC, is connected to the Carlyle Group. Enron, George W. Bush's second largest campaign contributor, invested in Carlyle, as does the Saudi Bin Laden Group, Khalid Bin Mahfouz (alleged financier of al-Qaeda, former Bush Jr. business partner), and international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, of Iran-Contra fame. Carlyle also does business with United Defense Industries, who profitted millions from the Iraq war, and arms manufacturing companies Boeing and and Lockheed Martin. Bruce P. Jackson, the head of Lockheed Martin, is a member of the PNAC. Carlyle also holds investments with BioPort Corporation, the only licensed anthrax vaccine manufacturer. Imagine those government contracts during the anthrax scare.

Political Friendster: Carlyle Group

Monsanto can also be linked to private military companies who are currently operating in Iraq:

In the South American nation of Colombia, the United States government has a contract with Dyncorp to spray an industrial version of Roundup on coca fields in that country through Plan Colombia. Its health effects, effects on legal crops, and effectiveness in fighting the war on drugs have been disputed widely

Dyncorp, which was founded in 1946, was awarded by the State Department a multi-million dollar contract advising the Iraqi government on setting up police agencies. They also operate in Bosnia as the primary police force, monitor the US-Mexican border, and act as Hamid Karzai's bodyguards in Afghanistan. They are also charged with sex trafficking and arms dealing in Bosnia and fraud for finances in Iraq. They're also a member of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq alongside Blackwater, and is affiliated with Civilian Police International, LLC, along with Kellog, Brown, and Root (linked to Dick Cheney) and Wackenhut, a former employee of whom was Frank Carlucci of Carlyle and Pharmacia.

SourceWatch: DynCorp
CorpWatch: DynCorp

Like these companies, Monsanto also profits off the Iraq War:

Monsanto's close ties are paying off now in Iraq. Article 81 (one of the "100 Orders" Paul Bremer issued "means that in future Iraqi farmers will be forced to plant 'protected' crop varieties defined as new, distinct, uniform and stable.... Where ownership of a crop is claimed, seed saving will be banned, and royalties will have to be paid by the farmer to the registered seed "owner". Farmers will be required to sign contracts relating to seed supply and, probably, to the marketing of the harvest. Where GM crops are involved (and possibly in other cases as well) they will also be required to sign contracts for the purchase of herbicides, insecticides and fertilisers.... The control of all protected varieties will last 20 years for field crops and 25 years for trees and vines. Farmers who save seed or otherwise break their agreements, and farmers unlucky enough to find the adventitious presence of 'registered varieties' in their fields, can be prosecuted; or else their harvests, tools and buildings will (may) be destroyed. Conversely, farmers will have no right to claim compensation from the seed owners who, for example, allow their GM crops to pollute organic crops and destroy livelihoods in the process.[5]. "In 2002, FAO estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers used saved seed from their own stocks from last year's harvest or purchased from local markets. When the new law - on plant variety protection (PVP) - is put into effect, seed saving will be illegal and the market will only offer proprietary 'PVP-protected' planting material 'invented' by transnational agribusiness corporations" [6] [7].

Monsanto's High Level Connections to the Bush Administration

I have to go for now, but tomorrow I will post on Gilead Sciences, the swine flu scare, and it's connections to high level American politics.

Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.'s job" Philip Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Playing God in the Garden" New York Times Magazine, October 25, 1998.

Funny that I was thinking the same thing earlier today, that pharma IS part of the military-industrial complex. After reading Jim Marrs "Rise of the fourth Reich" you will see just how deep the the US/Nazi connections run and it's goes awfully deep, not just pharmaceuticals, but IT, aerospace, finance, etc. Sad, but true, the US is the Fourth Reich. Once that settles in your mind everything else starts to make sense. Fascism didn't die in WW2, it just changed uniforms and is now stronger than ever.

If I knew how to, I would Star and Flag this post. Bravo! (Well I starred it of course )

If there is no link between persons and families running governments and big companies like these, you can call me a puzzled man whose current world perception is out of whack.

I have so much to say I can't get it out. I think I have to buy a dictaphone.

Well done OP!

Thanks for the replies, guys!

If there is no link between persons and families running governments and big companies like these, you can call me a puzzled man whose current world perception is out of whack.

You can say that again.

After reading Jim Marrs "Rise of the fourth Reich" you will see just how deep the the US/Nazi connections run and it's goes awfully deep, not just pharmaceuticals, but IT, aerospace, finance, etc. Sad, but true, the US is the Fourth Reich. Once that settles in your mind everything else starts to make sense. Fascism didn't die in WW2, it just changed uniforms and is now stronger than ever.

How is Rise of the Fourth Reich? I've been wanting to pick that up.

Here is an interesting quote from Joseph Farrell's Reich of the Black Sun, which I believe covers alot of the same ground as Marrs's book:

In the Spring of 1944, Merck and Company, Inc. received a large cash infusion from Martin Bormann.... This at the time Merck's president, George W. Merck, was advising President Roosevelt, and initiating strategies, as America's biological weapons industry director. According to CBS News correspondent Paul Manning, the lion's share of the Nazi gold went to 750 corporations, largely including Merck, to secure a virtual monopoly over the world's chemical and pharmaceutical industries. This was done not only for Germany's economic recovery, but to assure the rise of "The Fourth Reich.'

The Phoenix Rises: The Bornmann Plan

I'm having a hard time verifying that Merck, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, actually received money from Martin Bornmann, though it is known that Merck had ties to IG Farben.

Following the second world war, Vannevar Bush joined Merck's board of directors. Once again, this leads us directly to the military industrial complex:

During 1922, Bush and his college roommate, Laurence K. Marshall, set up the American Appliance Company to market a device called the S-tube. This was a gaseous rectifier invented by C. G. Smith that greatly improved the efficiency of radios. Bush made much money from the venture. The company, renamed Raytheon, became a large electronics company and defense contractor.

Raytheon, besides doing business with the Carlyle Group, is one of America's largest arms manufacturers today. Vannevar Bush is also responsible for exactly what Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address:

In June of 1940 he convinced Franklin Delano Roosevelt to give him funding and political support to create a new kind of collaborative relationship between military, industry, and academic researchers-without congressional, or nearly any other, oversight.[5] This post included many of the powers and functions subsumed by the Provost when MIT introduced this post during 1949 including some appointments of lecturers to specific posts.

Wikipedia on Vannevar Bush

Vannevar was also a key player in the Manhattan Project, which makes me wonder if he was ever in contact with Monsanto at the Clinton Laboratories. He is known to have had contact with James Forrestal, Truman's secretary of state who in 1935, who worked with Paul Nitze to draw up a merger between Texaco and Standard Oil. Nitze would go on to write National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), which has since become known as the "blueprint" for the Cold War, for President Truman. NSC-68 stated that the US, the "center of the free world", must wage a war over "the idea of freedom" against the Soviets through "superior overall power", i.e. increased wartime spending to build up military might. NSC-68 asked for the annual defense spending budget to be increased from the allotted $13 billion to $50 billion.

Merck's board of advisers included Henry Kissinger, and in 2006 gave $347,693 to candidates - 28% Democrat and 72% Republican.

The company spent $4,050,000 for lobbying in 2006. Of this total, $1,430,000 was to 12 outside lobbying firms with the remainder being spent using in-house lobbyists. Some of the lobbying firms used were Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, and Alston & Bird. [38]

SourceWatch: Merck

Political Friendster reports this link between Merck and Monsanto:

In 1995 Merck sold its Kelco specialty chemicals division to Monsanto Company for $1.1 billion, and its other specialty chemicals unit, Calgon -Merck and Co. Inc. has agreed to pay more than $1.8 million in penalties and Monsanto Co. will install equipment to cut air pollution from the Kelco kelp processing plant in San Diego as part of an agreement announced today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice.

[edit on 4-11-2009 by Someone336]