Prologue

PROLOGUE

YOU’VE SEEN THE name.

It’s on aspirin bottles. On soccer jerseys. In the fine print of medicine cabinets and billion-dollar mergers. Bayer is everywhere. A symbol of science, progress, and healing.

But that’s just the surface.

This is the company that trademarked heroin. That was absorbed into IG Farben, the chemical cartel that helped bankroll Hitler. That became part of the same IG Farben machine that built a chemical plant next to Auschwitz and ran it with enslaved labor. That inherited Monsanto’s herbicide and then spent years fighting cancer lawsuits.

And through all of it, the same name. The same logo. The same company.

Bayer didn’t just make it through the 20th century. It figured out how to win. It survived war, scandal, collapse, and trial. It changed its image, kept its power, and bought its way back into your bloodstream.

This isn’t about one corrupt company. It’s about the system that lets them live forever. The machine that turns pain into profit. That calls it medicine. That calls it business. That calls it normal.

Bayer sells medicine.
Bayer sells chemicals.
And somehow, we just keep taking both.