Bayers Latest Chemical And Biological Weapons

The Cutter Drug Company - located in Berkeley, California since 1903 - began making smallpox vaccines way back in 1906, and the plague in 1944. They've been making the plague ever since - 2.6 million doses every year - a $1.7 million dollar contract. Cutter makes about $10 million per year in military bio-weapons contracts. In 1958, Cutter was sued over crippling two children with the Salk polio vaccine. (181)

Bayer acquired Cutter's Berkeley laboratory in 1974. In 1978, Bayer bought Miles Inc. - makers of Alka-Seltzer, One-a-Day Vitamins and Bactine. (182) Today, this lab is known as "Miles Cutter." Federal inspectors from Rockville, Maryland, did a routine inspection of Miles Cutter's plague vaccine "on the assumption that [it] would be used in the Gulf War." (183)

Interestingly, many biologists believe that there is "no feasible defense against biological attack" because "the variety of attack agents is too large." (184) If vaccines are useless for defense, why are they being made? Well ... what other "weapon of mass destruction" can you grow in a petri dish? As weapons of mass destruction go, they're the biggest bang for your war-profiteering buck.

Weapon? Yes, weapon. To make a vaccine, you must first make the pathogen the vaccine will guard against. To make lots of smallpox vaccine, you have to make lots of smallpox. Bayer is essentially making useless defensive vaccines so it can get away with selling very effective offensive viruses while not (technically) running afoul of international bio-war treaties.

Bayer is also still in the poison gas business. After the Gulf War, the UN imposed far-reaching sanctions against Iraq, especially concerning getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It has now come out that 200 tons of a basic chemical substance for the neurotoxin VX has disappeared from Iraq's armaments. The patent for the chemical warfare agent VX comes from Bayer. (185)