14. Bayer AG
A well-known and global pharmaceutical brand, Bayer’s first patented product was heroin, which they marketed to children around the world for decades as a cough medicine free of side effects, despite the dangers of addiction. Bayer soon established themselves as the dominant pharmaceutical company in Europe after trademarking aspirin a year later. However, Bayer then became involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons, including the invention of chlorine gas in World War I and its founding of a “School for Chemical Warfare.”
During World War II, Bayer – as part of the now defunct conglomerate IG Farben – produced all of Nazi Germany’s explosives and used more than 83,000 forced laborers and concentration camp inmates in its factories. They also financed torture in concentration camps and manufactured the infamous Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide that claimed the lives of over a million people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek. Bayer has since resumed production of Zyklon B.
