The Ciba-Geigy Effect

[LuisP]

Foreword
Ciba-Geigy was formed in 1970 by the merger these two formerly separate Swiss companies, who then combined mustered a history and experience around chemicals and pharmaceuticals spanning more than 250 years.

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In 1996 Ciba-Geigy merged with the also Swiss Sandoz. The pharmaceutical and agrochemical divisions of both stayed together, and gave birth to the present day colossus, Novartis.

It then made some spin-offs, namely, in 2000, its agrochemical and genetically modified crops business, with the spinout of Syngenta.

Novartis holds 33.3% of the shares of Roche. It also owns 24.9% of Idenix Pharmaceuticals. It also has two significant license agreement with Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche, one of them for Lucentis and the other for Xolair, both of which Novartis markets outside the US. And Alcon, yes the big Alcon, was already the world's largest and most profitable eye care company when… Novartis decided to buy it.

All this to say that, by 2011, Novartis was the World's second largest pharmaceutical company.

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And that by 2012, a IMS Health report ranked Novartis as the biggest pharma company. Of them all.

Then again, according to the “2013 Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News” magazine, Novartis only ranked nº 3, behind the equally colossi “Pfizer” (2) and “Johnson & Johnson” (1). But if we take the “Contract Pharma” magazine, it is listed as nº 2, with “Pfizer” reaching the apex.

Anyway, whatever the podium placement, the fact that Novartis, in 2011, declared an Annual Revenue of US $58,5 billion and Net Income of US $9,2 billion, is then, I dare say … no big surprise.

Also not surprisingly in these hard times we live in, these Colossi are also “Creditors”. As in “State” or “Nations”, creditors.

Because according to the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), “European states owe €12-15 billion (US $16-20 billion) to the pharma industry, which includes groups like Roche and Novartis.”

There’s no Bigger Money, except for "The Big Boys".

What about the Defense Industry, you may be thinking, surely it “outguns” them ? Think again . If we look at Lockheed Martin (ranked #1 in that business by “Business Insider” magazine), in 2012 they scrapped a flimsy US $2,9 billion profit.

Banking Industry, please ? Ah, now you’re talking. Yes, banks are The Big Boys. In 2013 two US banks did top Novartis net income of 2011. As in just. They were JP Morgan with US $11,8 billion and Wells Fargo with US $10,7 billion.

But do not be impressed ! Since we’re talking about (ahem) a subject that I know a bit of, be advised that even among the Big Boys there are Bigger ones. True mensch ! They are Chinese, and they dwarf the Americans’ strenuous feat. Because the Biggest Boy of them all, the “Industrial Commercial Bank of China”, had in 2012 a neat net income of US $25 billion.

Don’t be alarmed, though. In these rarefied areas where Money talks (literally), they are all cousins. Big Banks own shares of Big Pharmas and Big Pharmas own shares of Big Banks, so in the end we’re always talking about the same “entities”. Or their cousins (ahem).

But I digress.

Point is, pharmaceuticals are one of two, maybe three places, where “the buck stops”. And stays put.

And Novartis is one of the guys that calls its shots.

Be it to treat Man’s or Beast’s whichever infirmities or biological needs, be it of the Body or the Mind …. you name it, they market it. Everywhere. There’s no “First” or “Third” worlds.

There’s a World. And they own it. Period.

Its road to Cure and Health, I mean.

Let’s not jump to false conclusions, please.

(to be continued …. yes, this was just a “Foreword”)


Credits :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciba-Geigy#Ciba-Geigy
http://www.genengnews.com/insight-and-i ... 60/?page=2
http://www.contractpharma.com/heaps/view/542
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/Re ... d=32185254
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-25-u ... 012-2?op=1
http://www.relbanks.com/top-us-banks/net-income
http://www.rediff.com/money/slide-show/ ... 120113.htm

[StarCat]

Well, you've sparked my interest Luis. I waffle, daily, between thinking big pharma is the most corrupt industry worldwide, and thinking big banking is the most corrupt industry worldwide. I can't be objective about the defense industry. Too many family ties there. Probably family ties to the Irish Mafia too, but I can't document those.

Cat

[LuisP]

Well, two out of three is not bad !

Hope your interest keeps along with what follows.

[LuisP]

Guido Ebner and Heinz Schürch were two scientists that worked in the research labs of Ciba-Geigy who one day made a fantastic discovery.
This pharmaceutical company, in 1989, patented a practical use of their “discovery”. Its European number is 0351357.
And then, in 1992, those experiments and research were terminated by their Employer, and other projects given to Ebner and Schürch.
Nine years later, in 2001, they both were found dead. Unexpectedly.


This is the story of what they found. And has been dully forgotten.


What they were working on was nothing special and in no way groundbreaking. They were experimenting with electricity on seeds. This, after all, had been done previously and the strange effects it produces – fast germination, shorter periods of growth but with bigger yields – had been known, and experimented upon, for decades. Dozens of patents exist on "Electroculture".

Experimented, but never understood. Still isn’t today.

China, in 2002 decided to send some “Chinese yews” seeds up with their astronauts on a space breeding experiment. The reason they chose these seeds is because the shrub it grows is on the verge of extinction for a chemical extracted from their barks is used to produce drugs for cancer treatment. This lead to an overexploitation of the species. In addition to this, they are slow-growing and difficult to breed.

The yew seeds that returned from space were then planted on the Earth, and it was – and is - a enormous success, producing fast growing shrubs. They do it till today, on a gigantic breeding base in Wuxi, a city of Jiangsu Province in east China.

So, gravity was not the issue, because the seeds were planted here, on Earth. “Radiation” was. Exposure to it. That made them prone to mutation, changing “something” inside the seeds. And they have followed through with this “space magic”. And have sent up rice, wheat, fruits and vegetables seeds. With also amazing results.

The Space-breeding Center of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences reveal that space rice contains 8 to 12 percent more protein than regular rice, and is more pleasing in appearance and pleasant in taste. Space peppers contain approximately 7 to 20 percent more vitamin C and trace elements than the varieties bred on the Earth. And that eggplants grown from seeds taken into space have reached remarkable sizes, with one such eggplant having weighed more than 2 kg, and with the size of a basketball.

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Why is it so ? How does this happen ?

They don’t know, or understand. But proved that it is so, and that it happens.

Ebner and Schürch didn’t understand it, either. They just “found” something that had never before been discovered.

And decided to see what “it” could do, besides enhancing seeds.

(to be continued …)



Credits :
http://www.google.com/patents/EP0351357B1?cl=en
http://www.rexresearch.com/articles/elcultur.htm
http://www.rexresearch.com/elcultpat/elcultpat.htm
http://www.bjreview.com.cn/science/txt/ ... 266313.htm

[Mikado14]

Keep going, you have my attention as well and from what I see, a good deal of many who are not even members here.

You have an audience and from those that didn't want you on another site. Strange don't you think Luis?

I await the next installment.

Mikado

[StarCat]

The "plant report" is vaguely familiar, but I don't know where I saw something similar. It may have been in a news report, or it may have been in a science fiction book or movie. My memory is rather revisionist at times.

Cat

[LuisP]

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't Mikado.
After all, and as I already said to Kim, it was me who left and all the rants about my throw off/banishment are nothing more than (ahem, arrhem) a manic paranoid delusions of grandeur, not anyone else's.
I had quit posting there long before I made my first post here and only after that happened was I (behold !) "evicted" from the premises. Therefore - and I'm repeating myself, so I'll use a variation - I was "only forbidden of doing what I no longer cared to do".
As can easily be proved by checking the dates, if anyone wishes to be troubled to such an extent.

Godspeed to all that lunacy, I say.

But most of the crew are very decent folk and I have no ill feelings towards them, so if they read my posts here, hey, great ! Rose and Cat don't seem to mind speaking with a "pariah" too, so Thanks to them all, and who knows, maybe one day we'll all be able to exchange unedited, unarchived and undeleted posts !

[LuisP]

Well Cat, maybe you saw it in a science-fiction book or movie, but if you really want to know more about this very real stuff, checking the “Chinese Academy of Sciences” site (http://english.cas.cn/) will be helpful, because a wealth of information about it is available there.

I also went to the “China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database”, China Nuclear Science and Technology Reports “forum” to check it, and – amongst several – this article here caught my eye : http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTO ... 7S1052.htm

Namely, because it touches many “bases”. From its Summary, here follows a excerpt (italics and color are mine):
“… the longer the seeds were kept in space, the higher the frequency of chromosomal aberrations was, implying that the combined effects of both cosmic radiation and microgravity or other space-flight factors were the main causes of genetic changes in space-flight seeds.
Good achievements have been made by space-induced mutations in crop improvement, especially in sweet pepper, rice and wheat, some very useful and rare mutants which might make a great breakthrough in crop yield improvement have been obtained.
It was concluded that crop space-induced mutation breeding can be an effective way in both breeding new cultivars and creating distinctive genetic resources because of its wide mutation spectrum, high frequency of useful genetic variation as well as short breeding period.”

(Full PDF article is in Chinese, so you should get a Add-on or a Plugin if your browser can’t read it. If you use IE, you might want one like mine. It is Free and you can download it here : http://download.cnet.com/ImTranslator-P ... 24887.html)

Now take into consideration that the authors of this paper are both scientists and professors in the "Institute for Application of Atomic Energy", at the "Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences", in Beijing.

But even they end by saying “… implying that combined effects …. or other space-flight factors, were the main causes of genetic changes in space-flight seeds.”

Meaning … not a clue.

Except when it comes to “its” effects. These happened. With “consequences”.

As the Chinese “Space Breeding Program”, ongoing since 2002, proves.

But back in 1989, inside a Ciba-Geigy lab, it was not just crops and seeds that “happened with consequences”.

And they didn’t need to go up in space, either.

[Mikado14]

But back in 1989, inside a Ciba-Geigy lab, it was not just crops and seeds that “happened with consequences”.

And they didn’t need to go up in space, either.

"not just crops and that happened with consequences".


Okay, should I wait for the next installment?

Mikado

[StarCat]

I saw an old movie starring Nick Adams that revolved around mutant plant life. That was a couple of years ago.

As far as pariahs, I'm a pariah in my family. Or meybe I'm a pirahna. I get confused. I just know my mother disowned me and left everything to my brother because she couldn't dictate my life. She did that to her grandkids too.


Cat