Deadly Drug Trials: Western Firms Bribed East German Doctors

It wasn't just the East German government that benefited from risky patient drug trials commissioned by Western pharmaceutical manufacturers decades ago. These companies also sent liaisons with lavish gifts to bribe and influence doctors to participate.

The presents always came in the springtime. When the representatives of Western pharmaceutical companies arrived at the Leipzig Trade Fair, they made sure that East German doctors were very well looked after.

One doctor enthusiastically described his experiences in a subsequent report to the Ministry of State Security, or Stasi. According to his account, things would get off to a cheerful start every morning at the booth run by Pfizer subsidiary Merrimack Pharmaceuticals: "There was champagne on the table, along with a carton of cigarettes, and the usual cosmetic products for my wife."

After that, he would head over to Swiss drug maker Ciba-Geigy, now part of Novartis. The doctor, an orthopedist identified by the code name "Jörg," says that he was taken "behind the scenes" and treated "very smoothly." At the booth for Frankfurt-based pharmaceutical industry supplier Degussa (now part of Evonik Industries), a representative made an effort to set things right with the physician when he learned that gifts sent for his children hadn't yet arrived. The rep promised they would be sent as a "direct package shipment."

The physician then proceeded to booths operated by Bayer, along with a British, an American and a Swiss company. After a few hours, "Jörg," then a department head in a hospital in Schwedt, in the state of Brandenburg, felt pleasantly tipsy. "By noon, I was almost drunk, and my head was filled with dirty stories about women that were not exactly professional."

Pharmaceutical companies from West Germany and other Western countries exercised little restraint when they wanted to test new drugs on the other side of the Berlin Wall. They paid the government of theGerman Democratic Republic (GDR) millions for extensive clinical trials, in which at least 50,000 East German citizens served as subjects, often unknowingly.

It has now emerged that these envoys from the West were running a corrupt system to recruit East German doctors for their controversial drug trials. Companies like Bayer and Sandoz also employed lobbyists to develop high-level contacts in the GDR.

Everyone Wins, Except for the Patient

It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. The companies gained access to clinical trial results at a low cost, while their partners in the East received cash, gifts and medical technology for their hospitals. According to a Stasi report, in 1981 alone, the companies sent East German researchers about 250 invitations for what were usually lavishly funded trips to the West. "To promote their commercial interests," the Stasi files read, the companies took advantage of "opportunities involving corruption and bribery."

The patients, however, were treated with far less consideration. They were neither compensated nor thoroughly informed about what would be done to their bodies, say victims today. Survivors report that they have yet to receive compensation for the harm they suffered.

Many of them have now contacted SPIEGEL, some with clear accusations and others with questions that have been on their minds for years. They all expect answers from the industry, as do lawmakers from all parties, who held a question-and-answer session last Wednesday to address the scandal over inter-German drug trials. More

“A tipping point is happening”

Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki discusses Obama's disappointing record on drugs and why he thinks true change may be near

110 kg of marijuana seized from a vehicle that attempted to enter the U.S. near San Diego

Documentary filmaker Eugene Jarecki took on the military-industrial complex in his award-winning 2006 film “Why We Fight,” and now he turns his attention to a war closer to home — the drug war. His new film, “The House I Live In,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year, takes a critical look at the criminal justice that has ensnared millions of Americans in order to enforce the prohibition on drugs. Jarecki spoke with Salon about Obama’s disappointing record on drugs, about one of the largest voting blocs no one has heard of and about why he thinks we’re a approaching a “tipping point” in the drug war.

The drug war has never quite broken through as a major political issue. What attracted you to this issue, and why should people care now?

The election. Not just the presidential, but at the legislative level and at the local level across the country. Isn’t an election ultimately about the question that we’ve been working out for several years now — what kind of a country are we intending to be? Ever since World War II that’s been a question. We became an enormous world power, and we’ve handled that power questionably, and ultimately, I would argue, to our own detriment. And certainly to the detriment of people who don’t benefit from the industrial system. And this [the drug war] might be one of the most pressing, and sort of inspiring, areas as a possibility for real reform. Whether we’re going to continue the kind of state-following and fear-mongering that we have had since the end of the Cold War, where we almost needed a new enemy, so into that pipeline we put the drug dealer and drug user.

Could we step back and say, there must be a better way for us to lead the world? Morally, spiritually and otherwise. We are now in many ways a laughing stock for the rest of the world due to the enormity of our prison population. We have outpaced every totalitarian country in the world. Not only proportionally, but in real numbers. China has five times the population, but it has a smaller prison population. So it seems to me that the moral bankruptcy of the war on drugs would be something that really should be a central topic of these upcoming elections. More