Communist East Germany allowed Western drug companies to use its medical patients as unwitting guinea pigs for tests with untried pharmaceuticals in return for hundreds of thousands in hard currency, a television documentary by Germany's ARD television channel has revealed.
The disturbing disclosures about the former communist state's patients-for-cash scheme comes only weeks after an admission by the Swedish furniture giant Ikea that East German political prisoners were used to make its products before the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
The ARD documentary Tests and the Dead, which was aired for the first time this week, sheds light on other dubious practices East Germany resorted to in an attempt to sustain its failing economy.
The film reveals how Western pharmaceutical companies deliberately turned to financially strapped Eastern Bloc countries in their search for human guinea pigs after the 1960s Thalidomide scandal, which had suddenly obliged them to carry out rigorous tests on their products before they could be sold.
In the West, the law stipulated that any patients taking part in drug tests had to be fully informed of the risks. However, in communist East Germany such restrictions appear to have been waived in an increasingly desperate effort to procure enough hard currency to rescue an ailing economy and a crippled health system.
