Bayer and Death: 1918 and Aspirin

Part 1 of 5

By J. Holcombe, D. Jacobson, and T. Ruhl

“Farbenfabriken Bayer’s worldwide efforts had left few places lacking aspirin. In the United States, Bayer’s giant factory produced aspirin under “American” management. After Bayer executives were charged with violating the Trading with the Enemies Act in August 1918, advertisements encouraged confidence in aspirin.” Karen Starko

The world has believed for almost a century that a new and virulent virus came out of nowhere worldwide and killed millions in 1918.  Two reports, one published in 2008 and the second in 2009, lay that myth to rest for good.

The first report came as a press release on August 19, 2008, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID):

“Bacteriologic and histopathologic results from published autopsy series clearly and consistently implicated secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory–tract bacteria in most influenza fatalities.”

People were killed by common bacteria found in the upper respiratory tract, according to research uncovered by F. William Engdahl:

“The 20 to 40 million deaths worldwide from the great 1918 Influenza Pandemic were NOT due to ‘flu’ or a virus, but to pneumonia caused by massive bacterial infection.”

The NIAID press release did not, however, address what caused the bacterial infections, but research by Dr. Karen Starko does.  She implicates aspirin, dovetailing with the NIAID research on pneumonia from massive bacterial infection, and goes further in also explaining the extreme rapidity of death:

“Mortality was driven by 2 overlapping clinical-pathologic syndromes: an early, severe acute respiratory distress (ARDS)-like condition, which was estimated to have caused 10%-15% of deaths (sequential autopsy series are lacking); and a subsequent, aggressive bacterial pneumonia “superinfection,” which was present in the majority of deaths.”

In looking at reports of those who died, two distinct groups became readily apparent to Starko, based on a very distinctive time frame from health to death:

1. People who died of pneumonia from a bacteria infection became sick and things deteriorated at varying rates from there to death; and

2. People who died so astoundingly fast that those deaths became a classic part of the frightening legend of the 1918 “flu” – people perfectly well in the morning and dead within a matter of hours.

In both groups, aspirin is now the likely causative agent.

For the first group, the pneumonias, aspirin suppresses the immune system, allowing bacterial infections to take hold. Doctors at the time were relating pneumonias to the use of aspirin.

“I did not lose a single case of influenza; my death rate in the pneumonias was 2.1%. The salycilates, including aspirin and quinine, were almost the sole standbys of the old school and it was a common thing to hear them speaking of losing 60% of their pneumonias.”
~Dudley A. Williams, MD, Providence, Rhode Island.

“There is one drug which directly or indirectly was the cause of the loss of more lives than was influenza itself. You all know that drug. It claims to be salicylic acid. Aspirin’s history has been printed. Today you don’t know what the sedative action of salicylic acid is. It did harm in two ways. It’s indirect action came through the fact that aspirin was taken until prostration resulted and the patient developed pneumonia.”
~Frank L. Newton, MD, Somerville, Massachusetts

“Three hundred and fifty cases and lost one, a neglected pneumonia that came to me after she had taken one hundred grains of aspirin in twenty-four hours.”
~Cora Smith King, MD, Washington, DC

For the second group which died so precipitously, their symptoms are consistent with aspirin overdose, accompanied by rapid death.  Starko explains:

“A report from Camp Dix noted, ‘The disease was a veritable plague. The extraordinary toxicity, the marked prostration, the extreme cyanosis and the rapidity of development stamp this disease as a distinct clinical entity heretofore not fully described.’ Salicylate toxicity is often overlooked because another condition is present, the dose is thought to be trivial, and the symptoms (hyperventilation, vomiting, sweating, headache, drowsiness, confusion, dyspnea, excitement [salicylate jag], epistaxis, vertigo, pulmonary edema, and hemorrhage) are nonspecific. In 1918, differentiating progressive salicylate intoxication from infection pathologically or clinically, ‘the dyspnea lasts from a few hours to a day…followed by respiratory failure, circulatory collapse, convulsions, and death’, was almost impossible….

“In summary, just before the 1918 death spike, aspirin was recommended in regimens now known to be potentially toxic and to cause pulmonary edema and may therefore have contributed to overall pandemic mortality and several of its mysteries. Young adult mortality may be explained by willingness to use the new, recommended therapy and the presence of youth in regimented treatment settings (military). The lower mortality of children may be a result of less aspirin use. The major pediatric text of 1918 recommended hydrotherapy for fever, not salicylate; its 1920 edition condemned the practice of giving ‘coal tar products’ in full doses for reduction of fever…. Varying aspirin use may also contribute to the differences in mortality between cities and between military camps.”

The cause of the millions of 1918 deaths is not just an historic matter. Since that time, medical authorities, international health agencies and governments have attributed the deaths to a frighteningly virulent virus.  Their view of 1918 has formed the basis for a great threat — that the world faced future pandemics of equal virulence, capable of killing millions.

Agencies have been created, international plans have been developed, and pandemic emergency laws have been written with military backup included. Billions if not trillions of dollars have been devoted to finding a vaccine to protect the world from a recurrence of the 1918 Spanish flu.

Yet NIAID has said there is no evidence of a flu and that common respiratory bacteria was responsible. Starko’s work supports that and offers a scientific perspective on how aspirin was the likely cause of the two types of deaths seen during 1918, one slow and one incredibly rapid.

Meanwhile, the government, the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization treat the rapid deaths as one of the frightening characteristics of a “mysterious” virus and proceed with vaccine development.

Given that the millions of 1918 deaths appear related to the pharmaceutical industry panacea of the day (aspirin) mistakenly applied, and that vaccines are the pharmaceutical industry panacea of this day, which would be mandated through pandemic laws, it is essential for the world to become aware of the facts of 1918.

As the next article will show, the massive promotion of aspirin by the confluence of governments, medical authorities and the pharmaceutical industry contributed to the 1918 deaths.

And now governments, medical authorities and the pharmaceutical industry have come together again and are repeating another massive promotion of a product (vaccines) and are even mandating it.

This opens the question of whether a second pharmaceutical industry product (vaccines) poses a second monumental threat to life, rather than a flu which never did.

Bayer and Death Series:

1918 and Aspirin
Aspirin Killed, Homeopathy Saved
Vaccines and CDC’s Myth of a 1918 Virus
Aspirin Deaths Continue Beyond 1918
A New Set of Questions about 1918