Wiesenthal Centre Demands Justice and Transparency from German Pharmaceutical Companies Reported to have Carried out 1980's "Special Medication Experiments"

"In view of German companies' history of collaboration with Nazi abuses of medical ethics, they must now release consentcertificates, insurance claims and propose compensation measures for the uninformed objects of post-War abuses"

Paris, 8 January 2013

In letters to the Chairmen of five major German pharmaceutical companies, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, stated that, "in view ofthe history of collaboration of several German industrial and pharmaceutical companies with Nazi abuses of medical ethics and practises during World War II, we were horrified at theTagesspiegel report on "tests carried out in Communist East Germany (the GDR) between 1983 and 1989, apparently, in many cases without the subjects' knowledge."
The letter continued, "Allegedly, these companies paid the then Communistauthorities some "860,000 deutchmarks (approximately 600,000 US dollars). In exchange, "special medications not on the market" were reportedly prescribed by doctors at East Germanclinics."

Samuels quoted from a 1983 article entitled "An 1983 article "Comparison of German and American Law concerning clinical trials"by E. Deutsch, PMID: 667781, stated: - "In German and American law, clinical trials require a positive benefit - risk evaluation, free and informed consent, medical and scientificqualification of the doctor and a written research protocol ... with minor or incompetent subjects, informed consent to therapeutic clinical experimentation has to be given by theirparents or guardians. In non-therapeutic trials, blind studies, double-blind studies and trials involving placebos, special attention has to be paid to the risk-benefit analysis and toinformed consent which in these cases, even in Germany, must be written... The most interesting difference in German law is the investigator's duty to effect an insurance against the riskof the research subject's death or invalidity." (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6677881)

The letter argued, "This regime is reinforced by European Union and World Health Organisation provisions, so that it behooved a WestGerman company to comply even when operating within the late German Democratic Republic."

Samuels urged Bayer AG, Schering (now part of Bayer), Hoechst (now part of the French Sanofi) Boehringer Ingelheim and Goedecke Pharma(now part of Pfizer), that "despite the mergers since 1989, we are certain that your company would wish to submit into public domain the certificates of consent, insurance claims andsettlements in your corporate archives."
The letter argued that each of the companies "had prospered since these medical trials and our Centre would appreciate learning whatreparations or damages it would propose to those who were uninformed subjects and to their families."

The Centre expressed its readiness "to provide its own researchers to study your archives and ensure that this outrageous chapter isclosed in justice and transparency".
"In view of German companies' history of collaboration with Nazi abuses of medical ethics, they must now release consent certificates,insurance claims and propose compensation measures for the uninformed objects of such post-War abuses," concluded Samuels.

For further information please contact Shimon Samuels at +33 (0) 609770158, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for newsupdates sent direct to your Twitter page or mobile device.



The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families inthe United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament(Parlatino).