BERLIN: Western drug companies tested pharmaceuticals on more than 50,000 people in the former communist East Germany, often without the knowledge of patients, several of whom died, the Spiegel news weekly has reported. Six hundred clinical trials were carried out in more than 50 hospitals until the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the report on Sunday said, citing previously unpublished documents of the East German health ministry, pharmaceutical institute and Stasi secret police. Many major drug companies from Germany, Switzerland and the United States took part, offering up to 800,000 West German marks (about $521,000 at today's exchange rate) per study, a boost for East Germany's underfunded health care system, Spiegel said. Records showed that two people died in East Berlin during testing of Trental, a drug that improves blood circulation developed by then West German company Hoechst, which has since merged with Sanofi, the report said. Advertisement Two more patients died in a lung clinic near the city of Magdeburg in tests of a blood pressure drug made by Sandoz, which has since been taken over by the Swiss group Novartis, according to Spiegel. Patients were often not fully informed about the possible risks and side effects, the … Continue reading →

Leading Western pharmaceutical companies paid millions of pounds to former Communist East Germany to use more that 50,000 patients in state-run hospitals as unwitting guinea pigs for drug tests in which several people died, it was revealed today. An investigation by the German magazine Der Spiegel said international conglomerates such as Bayer, Hoechst, Roche, Schering and Sandoz carried out more than 600 tests on patients, mostly without their knowledge, at hospitals and clinics in the former Communist state. The companies were said to have paid the regime the equivalent of 400,000 (338,000) per test. Schering, a concern which now belongs to Bayer, was said to have offered East Germany the equivalent of 3m to carry out a series of tests at an East Berlin hospital. The case of one unwitting East German woman who died in 1986 aged 30 after being treated with pharmaceuticals for skin cancer was cited by the magazine. Nicole Preiss, her daughter , said: There are so many secrets surrounding my mothers death I want to know which drugs and which companies were involved. Der Spiegel said it gained the information from Stasi secret police files and hitherto unpublished East German health ministry and pharmaceutical institute … Continue reading →