Chemical weapons to cures.
“Chasing Molecules” explains the connection between chemotherapy pharmaceuticals and photographic chemicals. “I’ve synthesized over a hundred molecules that never existed before,” Warner tells me. By the time he finished graduate school at Princeton in 1988, with a PhD in organic chemistry, Warner had published seventeen scientific papers–many on compounds related to pharmaceuticals, particularly anticancer drugs–a volume of research publication he immodestly but matter-of-factly says is “perhaps unprecedented.”
One day Warner got a call from Polaroid offering him a job in their exploratory research division. So he went to work synthesizing new materials for the company, inventing compounds for photographic and film processes. Describing his industrial chemistry work in an article for the Royal Chemistry Society, Warner wrote: “I synthesized more and more new compounds. I put methyl groups and ethyl groups in places where they had never been. This was my pathway to success.”7 There was even a series of compounds he invented that, in his honor, became known as “Warner complexes.”
Warner had married in graduate school and while working at Polaroid had three children. His youngest and second son, John–born in 1991–was born with a serious birth defect. It was a liver disease, Warner tells me, caused by the absence of a working billiary system (which creates the secretions necessary for digestion). Despite intensive medical care, surgery, and a liver transplant, John died in 1993 at age two. “You can’t imagine what it was like,” says Warner. “Laying awake at night, I started wondering if there was something I worked with, some chemical that could possibly have caused this birth defect,” Warner recalls. He knows it’s unlikely that this was the case, but contemplating this possibility made him acutely aware of how little attention he and his colleagues devoted to the toxicity or ecological impacts of the materials they were creating.
“I never had a class in toxicology or environmental hazards,” Warner tells me and shows me a slide from a lecture he gives that reads from top to bottom in increasingly large type: “I have synthesized over 2,500 compounds! I have never been taught what makes a chemical toxic! I have no idea what makes a chemical an environmental hazard! I have synthesized over 2,500 compounds! I have no idea what makes a chemical toxic! We’ve been monkeys typing Shakespeare,” he adds.
“The chemical synthesis toolbox is really full, and 90 percent of what’s in that toolbox is really nasty stuff.” It’s a coincidence and reality of history, Warner tells me, but the petroleum industry has been the primary creator of materials for our society. “Most of our materials’ feedstock is petroleum. As petroleum is running out, things will have to change. (That is why the “Merchants of Death” are getting more desperate. ” – Chasing Molecules (page xxii)
The chart below is from The Devils Chemists: 24 Conspirators of the International Farben Cartel Who Manufacture Wars by Nuremberg prosecutor, Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. (Examine the boxes and how they feed into one another. The Legal and Patents Depts. box was the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles were partners at Sullivan and Cromwell. They created the CIA to protect their corporate cartel clients)
“As petroleum is running out, things will have to change.” – John Warner (Businesses are changing and trying to find that high grade sulfur rich petroleum needed for production is getting more and more challenging. See article titles below)
General Electric to Sell Plastics Division By Claudia H. Deutsch – 2007… In January, when G.E. confirmed long-standing rumors that it was putting its plastics business on the block, most analysts expected the unit to go for $8 billion to $10 billion, and for the probable buyer to be a private equity firm.
But in recent months, G.E. executives had signaled to analysts that they expected to get $10 billion to $12 billion for the unit, and that it would likely go to a strategic buyer — that is, a company that would utilize the division and its products, rather than groom it for an eventual public offering or resale. Most analysts quickly honed in on Sabic, because of its access to Saudi Arabia’s vast petroleum supplies. After all, it was the ever-rising cost of benzene, a petroleum derivative and a key raw material for G.E.’s plastics products, that had sucked the profitability out of the unit for G.E. A company like Sabic, with an inexpensive and inexhaustible supply of benzene could far more easily turn a profit.”
Dow Chemical Closing 3 Plants In Louisiana By Ernest Scheyder, AP Energy Writer Manufacturing.Net – July 01, 2009
Dow Chemical, Saudi Aramco Agree to Factories in Saudi Arabia by Jack Kaskey
Saudi Arabia Stealing 65% of Yemen’s Oil in Collaboration with Total
Netanyahu: Israel prepares to annex most of Syria to secure the jewish future” (That should say Israel’s chemical weapons, pharmaceutical, industrial agricultural, and rubber and polymers industrial future and not “Jewish” future.) http://www.awdnews.com/…/netanyahu-israel-prepares-to-annex…
From Chemical Weapons to “Cures.”
One of the first effective chemotherapy agents, not surprisingly, was valued not for its curative properties but for its efficacy as a killer chemical. We know this chemical today as a notorious agent of war—mustard gas. Deployed by the German Empire during the First World War on the battlefields of Europe, most infamously in Ypres, Belgium, mustard gas—a relatively simple combination of sulfur, carbon, and chlorine—killed hundreds of thousands of French and colonial troops. Over a million others were sickened or maimed for life.* (Side note – this figure is wrong. There were 15,000 and of those 1/4 were killed that’s according to Joseph Borkin, a Treasury investigator who wrote a book about IG Farben and his figures are aligned with others) Once it made its way into the body, the chemical also affected tissues with larger proportions of dividing cells. Wartime autopsies found the lymph nodes, spleens, and bone marrow of victims depleted of white cells…. Mustard gas may have been “gone” from the battlefield, but it was by no means forgotten—which ostensibly explains why, in 1943, the American Liberty ship John Harvey was carrying a load of mustard gas bombs. The bombs were intended for retaliation, just in case the Germans reneged on the treaty. Docked in the old port city of Bari, Italy, the cargo likely would have slipped through the war and evaded the history books had the Germans not raided the port. On December 2, as German planned bombarded Bari, sinking 28 cargo ships including the John Harvey, nearly 100,000 pounds of mustard gas spilled across the harbor and rose into the night sky. Thousands of soldiers and citizens were exposed. Hundreds were hospitalized with chemical burns and blindness. At least 83 died. The cause was a mystery to all but a few “in the know.” Upon autopsy, it was found that the victims’ white-blood-cell counts were oddly depleted.
By the time of the Bari incident, leukemia was fairly well characterized as a cancer of the white blood cells. And secretive studies into the effects of mustard-gas-derived chemicals on white blood cells were beginning to bear fruit. Experiments by pioneering pharmacologists Alfred Gilman and Louis Goodman revealed astonishing efficacy of one mustard-like chemical that targeted white blood cells in laboratory mice afflicted with lymphoma. Typically, laboratory mice with lymphoma lived about 21 days. The first mouse treated with the mustard agent lived a remarkable 84 days. After two doses its tumor regressed. The chemical agent seemed to target cancerous white blood cells. What Goodman and Gilman couldn’t have known then was how the mustard derivative worked—why it seemed to target white cells and not most others. Years later, studies revealed that the chemical slips into the DNA molecule, rendering it incapable of normal replication. Ultimately, the hobbled cells die. Since it targets cells in the process of replicating—those that reproduce most often, including cancerous white blood cells, are preferentially killed. Unfortunately, the chemical’s efficacy was fleeting. Cancer cells, observed Gilman, were remarkably resilient. When dosing stopped, the cancer bounced back. Worse, it became increasingly tolerant to drug exposure. Yet, even though cancer control was short-lived, the ability to melt away a tumor through chemical treatment was unprecedented. In 1942, the first human subject suffering from as advanced leukemia was injected with nitrogen mustard. The response, writes Gilman, “was as dramatic as that of the first mouse.” Exposure to the mustard-gas derivative had chased the cancer into remission within days. However, as with the mice, disease respite was temporary…. Still, chemotherapy derived from mustard gas and other chemicals granted cancer patients a reprieve from death: a few weeks, months, or years—sometimes long enough for the next drug.” – Unnatural Selection: How We Are Changing Life, Gene by Gene by Emily Monsoon (portions from pages 62 – 64.)
“For twenty-one years, while the Kochs were financing an ideological war aimed at freeing American business from the grip of government, Donald Carlson was cleaning up the dregs their industry left behind. Stitched to the jacket he wore to work at Koch Refining Company, the booming Pine Bend Refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, was the name Bull. His colleagues called him this because of his brawn and his willingness to shoulder the tasks no one else wanted to touch…
Its profitability had proven the Koch’s purchase of Pine Bend prophetic. It had become the largest refinery north of Louisiana with the capacity to process 330,000 barrels of crude a day, a quarter of what Canada exported to the United States. It provided over half of the gas used in Minnesota and 40 percent of that used by Wisconsin. Carlson’s job was demanding but he enjoyed it. He cleaned out huge tanks that contained leaded gasoline, scraping them down by hand. He took samples from storage tanks whose vapors escaped with such force they sometimes blew his helmet off. He hoisted heavy loads and vacuumed up fuel spills deep enough to cause burns to his legs. Like many of the thousand employees at the refinery, Carlson was often exposed to toxic substances. “He was practically swimming in those tanks,” his wife recalled. But Carlson never thought twice about the hazards. “I was a young guy,” he explained later. “They didn’t tell me anything, I didn’t know anything.”
In particular, Carlson said, no one warned him about benzene, a colorless liquid chemical compound refined from crude oil. In 1928, two Italian doctors first detected a connection between it and cancer. Afterward, numerous scientific studies linked chronic benzene exposure to greatly increased risks of leukemia. Four federal agencies—the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Center for Disease Control—have all declared benzene a human carcinogen. Asked under oath if he’d been warned about the harm it posed to his hemoglobin, Carlson replied, “I didn’t even know what hemoglobin was.”
In 1995, Carlson was too sick to work any longer at the refinery. When he obtained his company medical records, he and his wife were shocked by what they read. In the late 1970’s, OSHA had issued regulations requiring companies whose workers were exposed to benzene to offer annual blood tests, and to retest, and notify workers if any abnormalities were found. Companies were also required to refer employees with abnormal results to medical specialists. Koch Refining Company had offered the annual blood tests as legally required, and Carlson had dutifully taken advantage of the regular screening. But what he discovered was that even though his tests had shown increasingly serious, abnormal blood cell counts beginning in 1990, as well as in 1992 and 1993, the company had not mentioned it to him until 1994.
Charles Koch had disparaged government regulations as “socialistic.” From his standpoint, the regulatory state that had grown out of the Progressive Era was an illegitimate encroachment on free enterprise and a roadblock to initiative and profitability. But while such theories might appeal to the company’s owners, the reality was quite different for many of their tens of thousands of employees.
Carlson continued working for another year but grew weaker, needing transfusions of three to five pints of blood a week. Finally, in the summer of 1995, he grew too sick to work at all. At that point, his wife recalls, “they let him go. Six-months’ pay was what they gave him. It was basically his accumulated sick pay.” Carlson argued that his illness was job related, but Koch Refining denied his claim, refusing to pay him workers’ compensation, which would have covered his medical bills and continued dependency benefits for his wife and their teenage daughter. “The doctor couldn’t believe he was never put on workmen’s comp,” she added. “We were just naive. We didn’t think people would let you die. We thought, ‘They help you, don’t they?’
In February 1997, twenty-three years after he joined Koch Industries, Donald Carlson died of leukemia. He was fifty-three. He and his wife had been married thirty-one years. “Almost the worst part,” she said, was that “he died thinking he’d let us down financially.” She added, “My husband was the sort of man who truly believed that if you worked hard and did a good job, you would be rewarded.” – Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of The Radical Right by Jane Mayer (portions from pages 120 – 122.)
Prevention has never been a priority because those who profit from causing cancer and disease also profit from treating it. Pesticides, chemical weapons, and chemotherapy… oh my! The “Merchants of Death” corporate cartel make a killing from all their wars on nations, insects, weeds, microbes, fungi, terror, and even cancer. Profits all around as they destroy our world and our bodies.
“Dr. Schrader had been working at an insecticide lab for IG Farben in Leverkusen, north of Cologne, for several years. By the fall of 1936, he had an important job on his hands. Weevils and leaf lice were destroying grain across Germany, and Schrader was tasked with creating a synthetic pesticide that could eradicate these tiny pests. The government had been spending thirty million reichsmarks a year on pesticides made by Farben as well as other companies. IG Farben wanted to develop an insect killer that could save money for the Reich and earn the company a monopoly on pesticides…. Dr. Schrader sent a sample of this lethal new fumigant to Farben’s director of industrial hygiene, a man named Professor Eberhard Gross (not to be confused with Dr Karl Gross, the Waffen-SS bacteriologist connected with the Geraberg discovery). Gross tested the substance on an ape in inside the inhalation chamber. He watched this healthy ape die in sixteen minutes. Professor Gross told Dr. Schrader that his Preparation 9/91 was being sent to Berlin and that he should wait for further instruction on what action to take next.
At Dustin, Schrader told Major Tilley that when he learned his compound could kill a healthy ape through airborne contact in minutes, he became upset. His discovery was never going to be used as an insecticide, Schrader lamented. It was simply too dangerous for any warm-blooded animal or human to come into contact with. Schrader said his goal was to save money for the Reich….
“Everyone was astounded, ” Schrader told Tilley. This was the most promising chemical killer since the Germans invented mustard gas. Preparation 9/91 was classified as top secret and given a code name: tabun gas. It came from the English word “taboo,” something prohibited or forbidden… At the Dustbin interrogation center, Major Tilley asked Schrader about full-scale production. Based on the Allies’ discovery of thousands of tons of tabun bombs in the forests outside Raubkammer, Farben must have had an enormous secret production facility somewhere. Dr. Schrader said that he was not involved in full-scale production. That was the job of his colleague, Dr. Otto Ambros…. From Krauch, Major Tilley learned quite a bit more about Ambros. That he had been in charge of technical development of chemical weapons production at Gendorf and at Dyhernfurth. That Gendorf produced mustard gas on the industrial scale, and that Dyhernfurth produced tabun. Krauch also revealed a new piece of evidence. Dyhernfurth produced a second nerve agent, one that was even more potent than tabun, called sarin. Sarin was an acronym pieced together from the names of four key persons involved in its development: Schrader and Ambros from IG Farben and from the German Army, two officers named Rudiger and Linde.” – Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobson
pages 146 -149
The holocaust never ended, it evolved.
Germany’s Master Plan continues.
“Oil is the blood of mechanized armies–the richest prize of battle. No sacrifice in lives or money has been judged too great to pay for its possession….
In 1929 what has been described by both Standard and I.G. as a “full marriage” was consummated. This marriage was witnessed by four documents dated November 9, 1929: (I) the Division of Fields Agreement, (2) the Four-Party Agreement, (3) the Coordination Agreement, and (4) the German Sales Agreement.* The parties to these nuptials dowered each other with exclusive monopolies in their respective holdings, vowing “loyal adherence” to each other’s welfare for such a time as the marriage should endure. In more concrete terms, the effects of this marriage may be summarized as follows: First, under the Division of Fields Agreement, Standard and I.G. agreed to eliminate all competition between themselves. This was done by recognizing the position of Standard in the oil industry and the position of I.G. in the chemical industry. Standard receive carte blanche in the oil industry of the world with the exception of the domestic German market. I.G., in turn, was assured a free hand in the entire chemical industry of the world, including the United States, a differential which was to embarrass Standard at a later date.
To grasp the magnitude not only of the Standard I.G. cartel but, in particular, the potency and proportions of I.G.’s grip on technology, we must understand the nature of hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons, compounds containing hydrogen and carbon, are the basis not only of petroleum products and of hydrogenated coal products, but are the fundamental constituents of a whole range of organic substances. A variety of techniques, such as hydrogenation, hydro-forming, hydrocarbon synthesis, polymerization, alkylation, and catalytic cracking, may be applied to carbonaceous matter. From the solid, the liquid, or the gaseous states of primitive materials, coal and oil, it is possible a myriad of petroleum and chemical products.
Thus, whatever is made in either industry, chemical or petroleum, can in large part be created from the raw materials of the other. Moreover, the vast array of synthetics which can be formed by these processes includes those specialized commodities which spell the difference between a vigorous industrial system and an unbalanced second-rate economy. Judged by military potential or by modern peacetime production, no nation which does not have some source of hydrocarbons and the facilities and knowledge necessary to their transformation can be strong.
Coal, oil and air are the triangular arch of the modern chemists’ war. The advances in chemical science have given hydrocarbons the quality and status of the magic philosopher’s stone which can make a poor nation rich. The list of war material which can be brought forth from coal, oil, air and wood reads like the order book of any army’s ordnance command: toll, tetracene, T.N.T., high octane aviation gas, plastics, synthetic rubber, dyestuffs, explosives, medicines, artificial silk, optical lenses, poison gas, food (the high vitamin content oleomargarine fed to German troops comes from this source), paraffin, clothing—what cannot be drawn from this cornucopia of slime and soot? *(Birth control pills, growth hormones, flame retardants, chemotherapy pharmaceuticals, preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic nitrates also come from that slime and soot, by the way, since there are not mentioned and should be)
The patents of I.G. and Standard were pooled so that Standard received not only the benefits of its own research in oil technology, but also received the benefit of any discoveries made by I.G. Moreover, it was intended that this patent consolidation would so fortify Standard that all other oil refiners would be reduced to a subordinate position, thus rendering them susceptible and indeed suppliant to the formation of a gigantic patent pool covering the entire oil industry.
The second agreement in this contractual marriage is the Four-Party Agreement, formed for the purpose of executing the Division of Fields Agreement. It was agreed that I.G. would transfer to a joint corporation, Standard-I.G. Corporation (S-I.G.), any rights upon patents affecting the oil industry. Standard in turn would transfer to this offspring its present and future rights under the hydrogenation process.
With regard to the exchange of experience between Standard and I.G., it was states that:
… The parties agree to work together on the technical development of the hydrocarbon field, to communicate to each other during the life and within the scope of this agreement all technical knowledge and experience, past, present, and future, patented and unpatented, of which the parties are now possessed or which hereafter be possessed in the sense of having the power to disposed of them, and also to help each other in their efforts to obtain adequate patent protection.
The merger of petroleum and chemical technology thus brought about could be held in check, “regulated” in business terms, only by a condominium of such size as the Standard-I.G. combine. Within the hydrocarbon and allied fields, the Standard-I.G. agreements must be considered as the radical hub from which other ancillary accords sweep out to all sectors of the oil and chemical industries.
The architecture of Standard’s relationships with I.G. is constructed on foundations which, when uncovered, advertise the true purposes of the edifice and explain its use. Once past the facade of “cooperation,” the structure is seen to be a fortress to withstand any assault by the forces of competition on the territory of Standard or I.G., and a salient base from which both might conduct sorties into adjunct industries.
This stronghold was built, to adapt a phrase used by Standard, by “piling patent upon patent,” and the analogy is therefore not too remote. In the judgement of the Senate Committee investigating the National Defense Program, “to obtain such a patent structure Standard paid a heavy price which, as in the case of other companies creating such patent structures, had to be borne by the entire nation.”
The Standard-I.G. cartel was in its scope and implications larger, more powerful, and in some respects, at least, of greater significance, than any other economic “junto” with which we have dealt or shall deal. But the characteristics of I.G.’s marriage with Standard are so similar to its agreements with other American and European industrial interests that no doubts can be entertained of I.G.’s purposes.” – Germany’s Master Plan: The Story of Industrial Offensive by Joseph Borkin and Charles A Welsh – 1943
(Portions from pages 177 – 185.)
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The Silent War 