G. D. Searle & Company

About G. D. Searle & Company

G. D. Searle & Company was an American pharmaceutical maker, begun by Gideon Daniel Searle in Omaha, Nebraska in 1888, incorporated in 1908 and run from Skokie, Illinois from 1941.^[1] It is the company that introduced the psyllium fiber supplement Metamucil in 1934 and sold that brand to Procter & Gamble in 1985.^[2] Searle is better known for Enovid, the first commercial oral contraceptive, for the sweetener aspartame and for the arthritis drug celecoxib, which its research division patented in 1993.^[1] The business survives inside Pfizer under the name G.D. Searle, LLC.^[1]

Monsanto bought Searle in 1985, the same year Metamucil changed hands, in a takeover negotiated by Searle's then chief executive Donald Rumsfeld.^[1] The buyer was the original Monsanto Company of St. Louis, a chemical maker founded in 1901: it merged with Pharmacia & Upjohn, took the name Pharmacia Corporation and then spun its agricultural business off as a new company under the Monsanto name, which Bayer bought in 2018.^[3] SEC EDGAR holds the two names as one Delaware filer, CIK 0000067686, recorded as Pharmacia Corp with Monsanto Co as its former name.^[4] The two encyclopedia articles date that merger differently: the Searle article puts it in 2001, while the Monsanto article has it agreed with Pharmacia & Upjohn in December 1999 and the new Monsanto spun off in 2000.^[1][3] Pfizer merged with Pharmacia in 2003 and acquired Searle with it, so the Searle business belongs to Pfizer today.^[5]