Berlin, 28 Dec. (TMNews) - Western pharmaceutical companies tested drugs in the 80s on patients in hospitals of the former GDR who were not always correctly informed. A German newspaper writes it today, quoting archival documents. "We have documents proving the existence of contracts signed between West German companies and GDR institutions on drug tests," a collaborator with the German national archives told AFP.
More than 50 Western companies signed contracts with the East German health ministry for 165 drug tests between 1983 and 1989, according to the German newspaper Tagespiegel, which studied the documents in detail. The newspaper mentions various companies of the time, some of which have changed in the meantime: Bayer, Schering, Hoechst (taken over by Sanofi), Boehringer Ingelheim or Goedecke (now Pfizer).
Sometimes patients were not informed, adds the newspaper, reporting seven concrete cases. The German regional television MDR, which worked on this dossier, cites the case of a 60-year-old patient, Gerhard Lehrer, in intensive care after a heart attack in the Dresden hospital in 1989. After taking "special" medicines, "which were not on the market", prescribed by a hospital doctor, his conditions worsened. These tablets, of which Lehrer's wife had kept a few copies, turned out to be, according to tests carried out at the request of Mdr, actually placebos for a study commissioned by Hoechst.
