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<p>&nbsp;The Big Pharma giant Bayer has just won approval from the US Justice &nbsp;Department for the $62.5 billion dollar takeover of the agrichemical &nbsp;behemoth Monsanto.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The deal, which was solidified on Tuesday, has many &nbsp;people on edge knowing that Bayer, a company with a sordid history of &nbsp;corruption is merging with Monsanto, the company who has made an empire &nbsp;with its&nbsp;pesticide, herbicide, and genetically-engineered seed empire.&nbsp;</p>
<p>As DW <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/bayer-wins-us-government-approval-for-monsanto-takeover/a-43985636">reports</a>, &nbsp;as part of Bayer’s agreement with US antitrust enforcers, the German &nbsp;firm will be required to divest some $9 billion in assets.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Regulators &nbsp;said they directed Bayer to sell off its entire cotton, canola, soybean &nbsp;and vegetable seeds businesses, as well as its digital farming business. &nbsp;It will also sell its Liberty herbicide, which competes directly with &nbsp;Monsanto’s product RoundUp. Prior to this sell off of assets, government regulators voiced their &nbsp;fears that the merger of these two companies would hamper competition &nbsp;and be a detriment to both farmers and consumers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Although Bayer’s asset &nbsp;sales were the largest divestiture ever required by the United States, &nbsp;some concerns over this monopoly are still alive, and rightfully so. Though Bayer established its &nbsp;reputation for the invention of aspirin, a more nefarious incident &nbsp;involving an HIV-contaminated drug to be administered to children &nbsp;suffering from hemophilia proved the corporation’s practices aren’t as &nbsp;noble as it would have the public believe.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In 1984, Bayer’s Factor VIII, used in &nbsp;the treatment of hemophilia, became contaminated with HIV — which the &nbsp;company became alerted to after a number of children became infected. In &nbsp;<a href="https://thefreethoughtproject.com/bayer-aided-abetted-government-knowingly-gave-hiv-thousands-children/">full awareness</a> &nbsp;its medicine was tainted — and unable to sell Factor VIII in its &nbsp;compromised state inside the U.S. — Bayer asked for and received &nbsp;permission from federal regulators to sell the affected batch to &nbsp;Argentina, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore after February &nbsp;1984.&nbsp;</p>
<p>According to documents <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/business/2-paths-of-bayer-drug-in-80-s-riskier-one-steered-overseas.html?pagewanted=all&amp;src=pm">obtained</a> by the <em>New York Times</em>, &nbsp;Bayer unit Cutter Biologic continued selling the tainted medicine &nbsp;despite knowing the potentially life-threatening risks to the children &nbsp;who would receive it. Cutter maintained in a written statement to the <em>Times</em> it had<em><ins> “behaved responsibly, ethically and humanely.”</ins></em>&nbsp;</p>
<p>The result of this sale of HIV tainted medication infected tens of &nbsp;thousands and killed thousands.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Thousands of innocent children and &nbsp;adults have died at the hand of this corporation and no punitive action &nbsp;has ever been taken against them. On the contrary, the health department &nbsp;leaders who accepted the tainted drugs in Argentina, Indonesia, Japan, &nbsp;Malaysia, and Singapore were all imprisoned, while the FDA continues &nbsp;down its hellish path.&nbsp;</p>
<p>When asked about the sale of the tainted Factor VIII years later,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/business/2-paths-of-bayer-drug-in-80-s-riskier-one-steered-overseas.html?pagewanted=all&amp;src=pm">Bayer responded</a>, <em>”Decisions &nbsp;made nearly two decades ago were based on the best scientific &nbsp;information of the time and were consistent with the regulations in &nbsp;place.”</em>&nbsp;</p>
<p>With the revolving door that is the FDA, the government was complicit &nbsp;in this conspiracy which is why no one was held accountable, in spite &nbsp;of all the deaths.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em><strong>“These are the most incriminating internal pharmaceutical industry documents I have ever seen,”</strong></em> said Dr. Sidney M. Wolf, director of the Public Citizen Research Group.&nbsp;</p>
<p>On the other side of this mega deal &nbsp;is Monsanto, who is responsible for poisoning the world’s waterways and &nbsp;ecosystems with a known probable human carcinogen, glyphosate — the &nbsp;hallmark ingredient in its herbicide, RoundUp.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Internal company <a href="https://thefreethoughtproject.com/unearthed-documents-reveal-monsanto-epa-knew-glyphosates-toxic-carcinogenic-effects/">documents revealed</a> &nbsp;in 2015, that Monsanto had tested RoundUp for potential toxicity for &nbsp;years&nbsp;but used the guise of proprietary information to force the &nbsp;Environmental Protection Agency into sealing those records. They knew it &nbsp;was dangerous but deliberately covered up their findings and brought &nbsp;the product to market anyway.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Independent research scientist, &nbsp;Anthony Samsel, obtained the documents through his senator’s office &nbsp;after having his Freedom of Information Act requests successfully &nbsp;thwarted for years. As he described from information found in those &nbsp;documents,<em><strong> “Monsanto misrepresented the data and deliberately covered up data to bring [glyphosate] to the market.” </strong></em>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Indeed, it has been Monsanto’s own skewed and faulty research on glyphosate that has <a href="https://thefreethoughtproject.com/unearthed-documents-reveal-monsanto-epa-knew-glyphosates-toxic-carcinogenic-effects/">allowed</a> its approval for use on food crops by the <a href="https://theantimedia.org/study-fda-allows-glyphosate-in-your-food-based-on-monsantos-faulty-research/">FDA</a> and <a href="https://theantimedia.org/monsanto-and-the-epa-a-love-story/">EPA</a>. Monsanto’s body of falsified research and its willful poisoning of &nbsp;the human population on the altar of profit are tantamount to crimes &nbsp;against humanity. Given Bayer’s equally corrupt and deadly history, the &nbsp;idea of these two companies merging their power and influence is &nbsp;chilling, to say the least.&nbsp;</p>
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