Deadly Side Effects: New Details Emerge in East German Drug Test Scandal !

Until the fall of the Wall, Western pharmaceutical companies conducted drug trials in East German hospitals. More than 50,000 patients served as subjects, often without their knowledge, and many died. The human experiments haven't been fully investigated to this day despite fresh evidence of wrongdoing. 


Virtually every major name in the pharmaceutical industry was involved, including Bayer, Schering, Hoechst, Boehringer, Pfizer, Sandoz and Roche. The companies administered everything produced in their research laboratories: 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.

Human trials are among the darker chapters of the pharmaceutical industry's history. Medical progress has always claimed victims. But medical research becomes particularly dangerous to patients when efforts to benefit mankind are dominated by the quest for quick profits. When that happens, researchers overstep limits that should never be exceeded, jeopardizing the health and lives of subjects in the interest of improving a company's bottom line

Today drug manufacturers depend on emerging economies like India, China and Russia when they want to test new drugs quickly and inexpensively. In the 1970s and 80s, though, the ideal testing ground was conveniently nearby: in East Germany.

Starting in 1983, the Western companies were able to officially submit their offers to a central office. During their visits to Fehrbelliner Strasse, the pharmaceutical representatives offered the East Germans up to 800,000 deutsche marks per study. Petzold and his comrades at the Health Ministry drummed up the funds for their republic, raising millions for the struggling East German economy. Like a pimp, their government sold its sick citizens and prostituted the country as a laboratory for the West's clinical trials.
 
Germany isn't nearly as far along when it comes to addressing the pharmaceutical trials. Volker Hess, a medical historian, is finally interviewing contemporary witnesses at Charité and wants to see the archives completely declassified, so that researchers can identify the perpetrators and the victims. A two- to three-year research project would be needed, says Hess, although, as he notes, the VFA hasn't been willing to provide any funding for the effort yet.

Time is of the essence, because of the risk of important evidence of the human trials being lost. As part of regular housecleaning, Charité is in the process of destroying its files from 1983. In an old warehouse in Berlin's Tempelhof district, forklifts are currently transporting boxes of records to be destroyed.

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