Novartis: Delysid LSD, the CIA's MKUltra and a $678 Million Kickback Deal

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Novartis grew from three Basel dye makers: Alexander Clavel, who produced the purple-red dye fuchsine for silk in the 1850s, Johann Rudolf Geigy's dyewood mill, and the Kern and Sandoz chemistry firm, founded around 1886. Mastering coal tar chemistry for fabric led them into medicine. Sandoz made a fever reducer by 1895 and opened a pharmaceutical department under Arthur Stoll in 1917, isolating ergotamine for migraines. In 1943 Stoll and Albert Hofmann discovered the psychedelic effects of LSD, which Sandoz sold as Delysid from 1947 to 1965, suggesting psychiatrists take it themselves to understand psychosis. The CIA bought LSD from Sandoz for its MKUltra experiments.

Ciba and Geigy merged in 1970, and in 1996 Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz combined in what was then the largest corporate merger in history, forming Novartis, from the Latin for new skills. The company then shed volume businesses: Syngenta was spun off in 2000, Gerber went to Nestlé, Alcon was bought for about $60 billion in 2010 and spun off in 2019, and the revived Sandoz generics unit was spun off in 2023. Controversies followed, from a Ciba-Geigy plant at Toms River, New Jersey, that became an EPA Superfund site, to a 2020 agreement to pay $678 million over doctor speaker programs held at expensive restaurants, fishing trips and sporting events.

• In 2013 India's Supreme Court rejected a Novartis patent on a modified form of the leukemia drug Gleevec, finding no significantly enhanced therapeutic efficacy.
• State health agencies found a statistically significant increase in childhood cancers at Toms River during the plant's 1970 to 1995 operation.
• After the 2017 inauguration, Novartis paid $1.2 million to Michael Cohen's consulting firm, just under $100,000 a month.
• A Senate committee report showed CEO Joseph Jimenez emailed Cohen multiple times in 2017 about drug pricing ideas.
• Novartis reported over $50 billion in 2024 revenue, employs nearly 76,000 people, and has given free leprosy treatment to over 7.5 million people since 2000.