Germany To Investigate Claims Of Cold War-Era Illegal Human Drug Trials
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Health and government institutions in Germany on Tuesday pledged to launch a full-scale investigation into several pharmaceutical companies, after a report emerged this week that at least 50,000 former East German patients may have been used as human guinea pigs in drug trials from 1983 until the fall of communism in 1989.
Health and government institutions in Germany on Tuesday pledged to launch a full-scale investigation into several pharmaceutical companies, after a report emerged this week that at least 50,000 former East German patients may have been used as human guinea pigs in drug trials from 1983 until the fall of communism in 1989.
According to an article by German news magazine Der Spiegel, western pharmaceutical entities, including West German firms pre-1989, had paid communist officials for over 600 drug tests in former East Germany – with the trials often done without the patients’ knowledge, causing at least four people to die during the tests.
The payments were alleged to be worth up to 800,000 German marks (around 400,000 euro at the current exchange rate) each; and were then subsequently divided between the government of East Germany and about 50 medical facilities that participated, Der Spiegel reported.
The German news magazine said that they had uncovered files from the private archives of individual physicians, the former East German Health Ministry and the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) and the country’s Institute for Drug Regulatory Affairs documenting the illegal trials, which involved nearly every major name in the pharmaceutical industry including Bayer, Schering, Hoechst, Boehringer, Pfizer, Sandoz and Roche.
Subjects were administered numerous experimental drugs, including those for chemotherapy drugs, antidepressants and heart medications, as well as other substances fresh from the laboratory – the effects of which were still largely unknown to scientists back in the 1980s.
Rainer Wagner, the chairman of an association representing victims of the former East German communist region, told Deutsche Welle that the Spiegel report showed “how authorities in the unjust GDR (German Democratic Republic) state pursued Western money and had no moral scruples.”
[quote]”Capitalist firms had exploited the situation for their own purposes,” Wagner said, calling for the victims to be fairly compensated.[/quote]Related: Is Monsanto Using Us As “Human Guinea Pigs”?
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On Tuesday, German Health Minister Daniel Bahr called on the pharmaceuticals industry to disclose their records on possible secret medication trials, calling for an inquiry report by the interior ministry.
“I demand that the pharmacy industry support this process and contribute to transparency,” Bahr said, adding that his own ministry did not have such data.
Berlin’s renowned Charite hospital, which was the biggest medical institution in the former East, also said that it planned to investigate the allegations and has ordered the customary shredding of old patient files be stopped.
[quote]“A proper scientific study is planned, but we are waiting for funding,” said a Charite spokeswoman to the Associated Press. “As a first step, Charite has stopped the usual shredding of decades-old files after expiry of the storage period. This is in order to reconstruct the course of action in particular cases as fully as possible.”[/quote]Meanwhile, spokesmen for several of the pharmaceutical companies said they had no reason to doubt the ethical standards of any past drug trials, but promised to cooperate with authorities investigating the allegations.
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A spokesman for Bayer said that all of its clinical trials conformed to global standards of the time “to the best of our knowledge.”
Germany’s Union of Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies (VFA), who account for about two-thirds of the German pharmaceutical market, also highlighted:
[quote]”According to our knowledge, the standards for clinical trials in the GDR corresponded to the prevailing standards at the time. GDR law provided guidelines for clinical tests which were comparable with those of Western states and the US.”[/quote]
