The other reason frequently given for the resurgence of attention to biological warfare is new advances in biotechnology and genetic engineering. In their book. Gene Wars, Charles Piller and Keith Yammamoto argue that advances in recombinant DNA work has revived the military's interest. In 1986, a Defense Dept. official told Congress, "The technology that now makes possible so-called 'designer drugs' also makes possible designer biological warfare" that is organisms can now be made to specifically resist an enemy's vaccines, or attack susceptibilities of particular ethnic groups that are perceived as the enemy. Like Jonathan King, Yammamoto, a biologist at UCSF, believes that the "distinctions between offensive and defensive work have disappeared."
The EIR indicates that Miles will be phasing out the production of plague vaccine in 1992-3 ("or as soon as the Defense Dept. has another supplier"). However, the date for phasing out the use of live plague bacilli, for research purposes, was quietly pushed back to 1994 in the development agreement. Miles indicates they will also be phasing out the other products they are currently producing for commercial use, in order to devote themselves exclusively to products made from recombinant DNA (indicated rDNA). Because they have not yet received FDA approval for marketing their rDNA products, the EIR states, "It is not possible to predict which products will actually be manufactured in the years to come, until clinical testing is completed and product licensing obtained."
According to the development agreement, Miles will comply with all local, state and federal laws regarding biological research. However, hidden in the appendix of the draft EIR is the startling statement that there are no federal or state laws pertaining to biological research. There is one Berkeley ordinance governing hazardous biological research, but Miles "determined that the facility was not subject to its requirements." Miles does claim that it voluntarily complies with the guidelines established by the National Institute of Health (NIH) for biological research, which they are not required to do because they do not receive NIH funding. According to an article by biologist Gary Waneck in Science for the People magazine, the oversight provided by NIH is virtually nonexistent. He writes, "[under the NIH Guidelines] ... regulation of rDNA activities was left to the institutions conducting the work... Presently there are no federal agencies in place to enforce compliance. Thus, the fox has been left to guard the chicken coop."
At the present time, Miles is incinerating 30,000 lbs. a month of infectious waste at the Integrated Environmental Systems facility in East Oakland. Since production is expected to more than quadruple with the proposed expansion, the amount of waste being incinerated can be expected to exceed 120,000 lbs. a month. Nowhere in the EIR is there any mention of what the health and environmental risks might be. The EIR does state that the waste from the rDNA is not decontaminated before being incinerated, although "the majority" of the waste from the bubonic plague is. Berkeley was the first American city to declare a moratorium on incineration of toxic waste, and numerous cities have rejected toxic incinerators in recent years.
Miles representatives have been quoted in the press lauding the cleanliness of their laboratories and the safety of the rFactor VIII product which they manufacture for use by hemophiliacs. These officials apparently don't tell the press that the drug has never been approved by the FDA for marketing. Miles, does, however, manufacture a different Factor VIII, made from "plasma fractionation" technology. This is the same drug that was the subject of a recent segment of "Inside Edition" on KPIX-TV (a CBS affiliate in San Francisco) regarding a lawsuit by hemophiliacs and their families against Miles Cutter and other companies. Fifty to eighty percent of hemophiliacs who used the products of these companies contracted AIDS due to defective screening of the drug in the early 1980s. Miles says the problem has now been corrected.
Since the company says it is impossible to predict what they might actually be producing in the years to come, and consequently Berkeley citizens are required to take a great deal on faith in the development process, it might be helpful to consider Bayer's past history in regard to concern for human life, respect for the environment, and ethical business practices in general.
Bayer And IG Farben
In 1925, Bayer joined together with a number of other German chemical companies to form the huge conglomerate, IG Farben. Bayer, however, kept much of its corporate identity intact while part of the Farben conglomerate, which lasted until the end of World War II Witness the fact that in 1988, at Bayer's 125th anniversary, the chair, Hermann Stenger, bragged to a reporter that he was a "third generation Bayerite." (Nor did he hide the fact that he fought in Hitler's army as a youth.)
Both IG Farben and the Bayer plant were intimately involved with the death factories of the Nazi regime. According to the book, The Devil's Chemist by Nuremberg prosecutor Josiah Dubois, "American investigators discovered that IG Farbenindustrie had invented Zyclon B and for years had sold and distributed it directly from the Bayer headquarters in Leverkusen, headed by Wilhelm Ernst Mann." Because it was originally an insecticide, before delivery to the camps the odor warning people that it was lethal was removed. Mann was also the head of the distribution company that delivered the gas to the camps. He did not go to prison and continued working with Bayer after the war.
A number of books about the Nazi period specifically mention Bayer as having conducted lethal experiments on concentration camp inmates. Robert Jay Lifton describes SS Captain Helmuth Vetter, "who ran medical trials for Bayer at Auschwitz and Mauthausen and possibly other camps." These experiments involved injecting prisoners with typhus, and then trying out various drugs to see if they would effect a cure. According to witnesses, almost all of the inmates died. Another author, Hermann Langbein, who survived Auschwitz, writes, "Bayer constantly sent him new preparations whose effects Vetter was supposed to try out on prisoners." Josiah Dubois describes a camp survivor who testified to seeing a letter on Bayer letterhead arguing about the cost of purchasing 150 Ukranian women for the purpose of experimentation.
The IG Farben conglomerate set up a huge complex of slave labor camps surrounding the Auschwitz extermination camp that became known as IG Auschwitz. The camps used more electricity than the city of Berlin. Work hours were from 3:00 in the morning to 11:00 at night. Life expectancy at IG Auschwitz was from one to three months. According to Dubois, at the Nuremberg trials it emerged that there was a direct teletype linking the Bayer plant at Leverkusen with the Auschwitz camps and an exchange of prisoners back and forth. Several books describe how IG Farben often preceded Hitler's army into the occupied territories to appropriate slave laborers (as well as chemical companies, many of which were Jewish owned). In his book, Industry and Ideology, Peter Hayes specifically refers to Bayer Leverkusen as having launched such "recruiting drives."
A handful of the IG Farben directors were found guilty at Nuremberg of mass murder. enslavement, and in some cases, plunder, but due to intense political pressure from right wing legislators in the U.S. (who felt that the U.S. should be fighting communism, not prosecuting "German businessmen"), those convicted received relatively light sentences. All were released from prison by 1951. Another Nuremberg prosecutor, Joseph Borkin, describes in his book, The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben, how IG Farben stockholders were able to maintain control by having the conglomerate broken down into its three largest companies, one of which was Bayer. Even the full name of the company in German, Farbenfabriken Bayer AG, sounds remarkably similar to that of the conglomerate, IG Farbenindustrie AG.
Priority in buying Bayer stock was given to the old IG Farben stockholders. Two weeks after the Allied forces finally left Germany in 1955, 450 of the Farben stockholders convened and began re-writing Bayer's by-laws to permit stock to be held anonymously - something the Allies had opposed for fear that convicted war criminals would resume control of the company. A year later, in 1956, Bayer elected Fritzter Meer, one of those found guilty of mass murder, to be head of their supervisory board. Joseph Borkin, whose book, more than any other, exposes the role of the conglomerate in supporting the Nazi regime, died under mysterious circumstances in 1978, soon after the book was published, and before he could leave on tour to promote it.
Bayer has a long history of poison gas production, beginning during World War I, when thousands died as a result of Bayer's chlorine gas, produced despite the Hague Convention outlawing gas warfare. During the Nazi period, a Bayer chemist by the name of Schrader discovered the extremely deadly nerve gas Sarin. The Germans built secret factories to stockpile the new chemical weapon, under the direction of IG Farben director Otto Ambros. According to a book by BBC journalists Harris and Paxman, the Allies were quick to acquire the new technology, and the U.S. Chemical Corps produced between 15 and 20,000 tons of Sarin in the mid-1950s.
In the book, IG Farben: Die Unshuldigen Kriegs Planer ("The Innocent Maker Of War"), Peter Schreiber writes that during the Vietnam War, Bayer continued developing poison gases, with plants near Johannesburg and Barcelona. Otto Ambros, who had been convicted at Nuremberg, was working with Bayer on the production of poison gas during this time. Bayer gave the gases directly to their Kansas subsidiary Chemargo for use by the U.S. Chemical Corps in Vietnam. Schreiber writes that Bayer also worked with the U.S. Army at the Center for Bacteriological Warfare at Ft. Detrick on developing new weapons. After describing the huge contributions made by Bayer to the Pinochet regime in Chile, Schreiber writes, "Wherever they went, they also influenced politics and organized the oppression of workers."
In 1987, the same year that the Soviet Union ceased production of chemical weapons, the U.S. began massive production of a new type of chemical weapon, following a hiatus of 18 years. These binary weapons carry two relatively non-lethal nerve gas ingredients, which when combined at the time of firing become lethal. In 1990, when the U.S. Army exhausted its supplies of the main ingredient in Sarin, production at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, ground to a halt. President Bush demanded that Bayer turn over its supplies of the ingredient, since their Pittsburgh subsidiary, Mobay, is one of the largest U.S. producers. Bayer's chair, Stenger, initially expressed his reluctance (which an article in Newsweek noted may have been due to the fact that Bayer was currently under investigation in Cologne for shipping chemical weapon ingredients to Iran). The company later indicated it would comply if forced to under a 1950 law requiring companies to accept defense-related production orders. Although Bush declared in 1988, "I want to be the one to banish chemical and biological weapons from the face of the earth," that didn't stop him for asking for $276.5 million for chemical weapons in 1990-91.
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