1.Bayer Fudged
2.Bayer 1 of 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
3.Potty Stotty
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1.Fudged
John Vidal, Eco Sounding
The Guardian , February 4, 2004
Paul Rylott, Bayer UK's top GM scientist, was last week queuing up for a meal after delivering a talk on predicting crisis in the food industry when he had a crisis of his own. One of the Biotic Baking Brigade (BBB) slapped a chocolate fudge cake in his face. Rylott's response was not recorded but the BBB, like Stotty (see below), rewrote Shakespeare:
"O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the pies of war."
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Here are Multinational Monitor's 10 Worst Corporations of 2003... [EXCERPT]
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03december/dec03corp1.html
BAYER
Everyone Is Expected To Obey The Law
Bayer's got a headache, and aspirin ain't going to help.
Earlier this year, the company pled guilty to defrauding the federal government out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare payments. How did this crime come to light?
On February 9, 1999, George Couto, a Bayer Corporation marketing executive, attended a mandatory ethics training session at a Bayer office in Connecticut.
The training session was kicked off by a video address by Helge Wehmeier, the head of Bayer's entire U.S. operation.
"Everyone is expected to obey the law -- not only the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law as well," Wehmeier told the assembled Bayer executives. "You will never be alone to adhere to the high standards of the law. Should you feel prodded, speak with a lawyer, or call me. I'm serious about that."
The assembled employees in the room erupted into laughter.
But Couto had something on his mind. He knew that Bayer had engaged in an elaborate scheme to defraud the Medicaid program out of $100 million.
On February 11, 1999, two days after the ethics training class, he wrote his boss a one paragraph memo asking how the company reconciled the Medicaid scheme with the company's expectation to adhere to the spirit and letter of the law. No one ever got back to him.
So, Couto decided to pursue the matter elsewhere. He sought legal assistance from attorneys Neil Getnick, Lesley Skillen and Scott Tucker -- and filed a qui tam lawsuit against Bayer. That lawsuit was filed in early 2000.
He quit Bayer soon thereafter.
The case was filed under seal. In April 2002, Couto, age 39, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He knew he was going to die, but wanted to make sure that the case would not die with him.
So his lawyers, over the strenuous objections of Bayer's lawyers, demanded that Couto be deposed on videotape. In August 2002, he was deposed, and withstood a grueling cross-examination.
"In my view, all that cross-examination did was to underscore the strength of the case and demonstrate what an extraordinary person George was," says Getnick. "As a litigator, I came to the conclusion -- and I believe everyone in that room where the deposition was taken came to the same conclusion -- that no defendant company would ever have wanted that videotape played before a jury at trial."
Couto died in November 2002. But in April 2003, his wishes came true, as Bayer pled guilty to one federal criminal count and agreed to pay a $5.5 million criminal fine.
The company also agreed to pay $251 million to settle Couto's civil False Claims Act case.
Couto's estate will get a $34 million relator's fee. GlaxoSmithKline, which engaged in a similar fraud against Medicaid, will pay $87 million to settle its case.
Bayer was charged with knowingly providing Medicaid incorrect data regarding pricing of prescription drugs, preventing Medicaid from receiving discounts to which it was entitled.
And it's not just stealing with Bayer.
Check this out:
The Times of London reported earlier this year that the giant pharmaceutical company used students (John Vidal, Eco Sounding The Guardian , February 4, 2004) to test a "highly hazardous" pesticide linked to serious disorders.
Bayer CropScience, of Mannheim, Germany, paid the students, mostly from Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, about $450 each to consume the pesticide, according to the report by Times medical correspondent Lois Rogers. Experts are worried that cash-strapped students are vulnerable targets for researchers.
According to the report, Bayer is using the results of the study, conducted between 1998 and 2000, to argue that restrictions on pesticide use should be eased, because no immediate adverse effects were suffered.
In April, the company said it was trying to settle an additional 500 lawsuits brought over its anti-cholesterol drug Baycol. The company has already settled 400 of the cases. The announcement came after the New York Times ran a front-page article reporting that newly disclosed company documents indicate that some senior executives at Bayer were aware that their anti-cholesterol drug had serious problems long before the company pulled it from the market.
According to the Times, they include e-mail messages, memos and sworn depositions of executives that suggest that Bayer promoted the drug, Baycol, even as a company analysis found that patients on Baycol were falling ill or dying from a rare muscle condition much more often than patients on similar drugs.
Bayer, which developed Baycol, says the drug was marketed appropriately and is safe when used properly.
But approximately 100 deaths and 1,600 injuries worldwide have been linked to a muscle disorder caused by the drug, according to regulatory filings by the company.
The drug, which studies found to be less effective at its initially approved strength than competing medicines, caused more problems at higher doses.
Senior executives at Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline were aware that this might be possible as early as 1997, the Times reported.
More than 10,000 patients who took Baycol or the families of those who died have filed lawsuits against Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline.
Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline have settled more than 400 of the cases for individual amounts ranging from $200,000 to $1.2 million, according to lawyers for the patients.
The company denies that it was aware of possible dangers with Baycol long before it voluntarily withdrew the cholesterol-lowering drug from the market. "Bayer continuously monitored ongoing Baycol data post-launch to ensure that the drug was being used safely and correctly, and in accordance with labeling recommendations," the company says in a statement. It says it withdrew the drug as soon as it was apparent that its dangerous side effects could not be avoided.
Baycol wasn't the only case in which Bayer was accused of deadly delay in removing hazardous products from the market.
In June 2003, the New York Times reported that a Bayer unit sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs -- medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS -- to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980s while selling a new, safer product in the West.
The Bayer unit, Cutter Biological, introduced its safer medicine in late February 1984 as evidence mounted that the earlier version was infecting hemophiliacs with HIV. Yet for over a year, the company continued to sell the old medicine overseas, prompting a U.S. regulator to accuse Cutter of breaking its promise to stop selling the product, the Times reported.
The company says it "emphatically denies misconduct in the marketing of these products in the mid-1980s."
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3.Bard to worse
John Vidal, Eco Sounding
The Guardian , February 4, 2004
Stotty, aka Philip Stott, all purpose eco-contrarian and emeritus professor of geography at London University, may have finally lost it. He has taken up cudgels against a windfarm and in order to make his point has rewritten chunks of William Shakespeare:
"Blade answers blade, and through these, sharpened, slice
Birds, small and large, slash-slaughtered in a trice;
Turbine faces turbine, in high and boastful whines
Piercing the night's dull ear ... "
Steady, Stotty, steady.
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more of stott's rot: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=126&page=S