Photo Gallery Human Guinea Pigs
More than 50,000 East German patients served as subjects in drug trials conducted by Western pharmaceuticals companies, often without their knowledge. Many died. Hubert Buchmüller, 59, says, "I might be the only survivor of trials that were performed at the Lostau Chest Clinic in 1989."
Many of the trials were conducted at Berlin's Charité university hospital, pictured here in a 1984 archive photo. It is unlikely the tests conducted in East Germany would have been allowed in the West.
Two patients are shown in this archive photo from Charité university hospital. Harald Mau, who would later become the dean of the hospital, recalls a sentence often uttered by senior physicians at the then cash-strapped Charité: "If brings in hard currency, so we'll do it."
Virtually every major name in the pharmaceutical industry was involved in the medicine testing scandal in East Germany, including Bayer, Schering, Hoechst, Boehringer, Pfizer, Sandoz and Roche. Many of these companies are now part of globalized pharmaceutical concerns.
Schering, for example, is today part of Bayer. Lobbyists for companies like Bayer and Schering had to discreetly negotiate with their East German contacts over patient trials.
