Bayer’s crimes
The company that bought Monsanto and retired its name carries a record of its own — one that runs from a synthetic-rubber plant beside Auschwitz to a warehouse of HIV-tainted blood product shipped abroad.
Bayer was a founding constituent of IG Farben, the chemical cartel that built the Buna works at Auschwitz-Monowitz and drew its labor from the camp. Four decades after the war, a Bayer division called Cutter kept selling an older, HIV-risk clotting medicine to hemophiliacs in Asia and Latin America after a safer version was already on Western shelves. We grade the documented history as fact and refuse the exaggerations that would let the company dismiss the whole account in a sentence.
What this page is about
The firm that now owns most of the world’s patented seed did not arrive with clean hands. Bayer was one of the six companies that merged in 1925 to form IG Farben, the chemical cartel the Allies broke back apart after the war. IG Farben built its Buna synthetic-rubber and fuel plant next to Auschwitz, and in October 1942 the SS established the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp (“Buna,” later Auschwitz III) specifically to house the prisoners forced to labor there — a history documented by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In the 1980s a Bayer division, Cutter Biological, sold a blood-clotting product for hemophiliacs that carried a high risk of transmitting HIV. After Cutter introduced a safer, heat-treated version in early 1984, it kept selling the older, riskier product overseas — in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Argentina — for more than a year, a decision The New York Times documented in 2003 from the company’s own records. We grade both the Holocaust-era history and the Cutter export decision as fact.
Books that go deeper on this story. Links are Amazon affiliate searches — buying through them supports the work at no cost to you.
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Step through it here, or present it fullscreen.
Bayer's crimes.
The firm that bought Monsanto and retired its name arrived with a record of its own — from a plant beside Auschwitz to HIV-tainted blood shipped abroad.
The record, in order
Every dated event on this page, assembled chronologically. The page may cover events in a different order for the narrative; this is the straight timeline.
Two entries, graded
IG Farben, the Buna works, and the camp built to supply it
FACTBayer was one of six firms that merged on December 2, 1925 to create IG Farben, the German chemical cartel; after the war the Allies seized and dissolved IG Farben and Bayer re-emerged as one of its successor companies. During the war IG Farben built a synthetic-rubber and fuel plant — the 'Buna-Werke' — adjacent to Auschwitz, and in late October 1942 the SS established the Auschwitz-Monowitz subcamp (prisoners called it 'Buna'; from late 1943 it was designated Auschwitz III) expressly to house Auschwitz prisoners assigned to forced labor at the IG Farben works, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Thousands of prisoners died from the labor and conditions. The forced-labor history and Bayer's status as an IG Farben constituent and successor are documented fact; we present them without the exaggerated 'single largest donor to Hitler' framing.
- U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum — 'Auschwitz' (Holocaust Encyclopedia): the SS established Auschwitz-Monowitz ('Buna' / Auschwitz III) in late October 1942 to house prisoners forced to labor at the I.G. Farben synthetic-rubber and fuel plant
- IG Farben was formed in 1925 from six firms including Bayer, BASF and Hoechst, was seized by the Allies after the war, and was split back into its constituents — corporate lineage documented in Bayer's and BASF's own corporate histories
Cutter Biological: the HIV-risk clotting product Bayer kept selling overseas
FACTIn the mid-1980s a Bayer division, Cutter Biological, sold Factor VIII concentrate — a blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs — that carried a high risk of transmitting HIV. Cutter introduced a safer, heat-treated version in late February 1984 as evidence mounted that the older product was infecting patients, but for more than a year it continued selling the old, unheated product in Asia and Latin America, and kept manufacturing it for several months more, in part to fulfill fixed-price contracts and avoid being stuck with unmarketable inventory. In Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs contracted HIV after using Cutter's old medicine; it was also sold after February 1984 in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Argentina. The New York Times documented the decision in 2003 from Cutter's own records produced in hemophiliac litigation; Bayer said Cutter had 'behaved responsibly, ethically and humanely.'
The pedigree of the firm that now owns the seed
The point of this hub is not that a single company is uniquely evil; it is that a handful of firms enclosed the world’s seed and chemical supply, and their conduct should be judged by their records. Bayer’s record does not begin with Roundup. Its IG Farben lineage runs directly into the story this site tells elsewhere — the same interwar German cartels that Sullivan & Cromwell represented in Trading With the Enemy and the Dulles Blueprint. And the Cutter episode shows the throughline in modern form: a calculation that a product too dangerous for one market is acceptable for another, made to protect inventory and contracts. When you read the Monsanto rap sheet Bayer absorbed, remember it was added to a ledger that already included this.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.