I first heard about this on the BBC’s radio broad­cast, where Bay­er was specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22522328

14 May 2013 Last updat­ed at 07:18 ET

Hos­pi­tal probes E Ger­man ‘human guinea pig’ drug tests

A top Berlin hos­pi­tal plans to inves­ti­gate the con­duct of drug tri­als in the for­mer East Ger­many amid alle­ga­tions that some patients were used as human guinea pigs.

Com­mu­nist offi­cials allowed West­ern firms to test new drugs on about 50,000 peo­ple, often with­out their knowl­edge, the news mag­a­zine Der Spiegel says.

Now the Charite hos­pi­tal says it will stop shred­ding old patient records and inves­ti­gate what hap­pened.

The tests took place in the 1980s.

Der Spiegel says it got the infor­ma­tion from for­mer East Ger­man health min­istry records, the old Stasi secret police files, the for­mer state’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal author­i­ty and pri­vate col­lec­tions.

Drug com­pa­nies from West Ger­many, Switzer­land and the US alleged­ly offered up to 800,000 Deutschmarks (about 400,000 euros; $520,000) per clin­i­cal study — for­eign exchange that was much need­ed in the under­fund­ed East Ger­man health ser­vice.
Eth­i­cal ques­tions

In a state­ment, the Charite hos­pi­tal said that “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.”

Prof Volk­er Hess of Charite’s med­ical his­to­ry insti­tute said the con­duct of the East Ger­man clin­i­cal tri­als should be re-exam­ined, to find out the degree of patient con­sent and how unde­sir­able side-effects were han­dled. The study should also com­pare East Ger­many’s med­ical pro­ce­dures with those that were stan­dard in the West at the time, he said.

Ger­many’s Union of Research-based Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Com­pa­nies (VFA) wel­comed the idea of research­ing the old East Ger­man clin­i­cal tri­als. The VFA’s mem­bers account for about two-thirds of the Ger­man phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mar­ket.

“Accord­ing to our knowl­edge, the stan­dards for clin­i­cal tri­als in the GDR cor­re­spond­ed to the pre­vail­ing stan­dards at the time,” said the VFA’s chief exec­u­tive Bir­git Fis­ch­er. “GDR law pro­vid­ed guide­lines for clin­i­cal tests which were com­pa­ra­ble with those of West­ern states and the US.”

More than 50 East Ger­man hos­pi­tals were involved in the clin­i­cal tri­als, Der Spiegel reports. It says the West­ern drug com­pa­nies that took part includ­ed Bay­er, Scher­ing, Hoechst and San­doz, which is now part of Novar­tis.

In state­ments to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press news agency, spokes­men for Novar­tis and Bay­er said their clin­i­cal tri­als, to their knowl­edge, con­formed with eth­i­cal and legal stan­dards.

@Vanfield–

Note that, in addi­tion to Bay­er, Hoechst and San­doz were involved–also part of the old I.G. com­plex.

I.G. Far­ben uber alles.

The spin on this is also inter­est­ing. Most sto­ries on this have empha­sized the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of the for­mer East Ger­man author­i­ties.

The IG suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies cer­tain­ly did­n’t shrink from the oppor­tu­ni­ty of using human guinea pigs.

Best,

Dave Emory