Murder squad investigates official of the German health department...
Writs against the pharmaceutical company... Hoechst

On 27 November 1986 a programme about the anti-depressant "Alival", manufactured by Hoechst Pharmaceuticals was screened nationwide on German television. The programme, screened at peak viewing time (despite a bid by the company to obtain an injunction from the District Court in Cologne to prevent it being shown)... revealed the following:

1. how Hoechst continued to market "Alival" despite numerous medical reports of patients dying or suffering serious injuries from its use;
2. how medical journals had informed the German Health Department seeking urgent investigation of "Alival".. and how they had issued an official warning to the medical profession;
3. how the Federal Health Department had ignored these requests for urgent action... its Director Dr B. Schneiders claiming that there was no cause for concern;
4. how the medical journals, receiving no response from the Health Dept had decided to warn doctors about the dangers of "Alival" through their own publications;
5. how Hoechst reacted to the appeals sent to it by the medical journals by actually stepping up its advertising for "Alival" and assuring doctors of its safety;
6. how a doctor from one of the medical journals was refused permission to speak when he tried to raise the question of "Alival" at the Annual General Meeting of Hoechst (the microphone he was using being switched off in mid-sentence);
7. how the British Department of Health banned the drug within three days after receiving reports of deaths and injuries within UK;
8. how the manufacturers failed to answer repeated requests for an interview with German TV (on the question of "Alival" and the deaths and injuries it was causing). And that finally when an interview was given at the company's head office in Frankfurt Hoechst served an injunction on the TV authorities to prevent the interview being screened.

The "Frankfurter Rundschau" of 6 December 1986 carried an Associated Press report as follows:

"Following several writs taken out against Hoechst and a leading official of the German Federal Health Dept, the police and courts have to establish whether two medicaments manufactured by Hoechst have contributed to the deaths of several patients. Chief Detective Superintendent Horst Klemmer stated on 5 December 1986 that Berlin Murder Squad No. 3 was investigating the case of Dr Bernard Schneiders, Director of the Medical Institute at the Health Department on suspicion of "manslaughter in connection with the death of several as yet unknown persons."

The investigations relate to the medicaments "Alival" and "Psyton", marketed by Hoechst since the end of the 1970s, and approved by the Federal Health Department on 23 March 1978.

Hoechst withdrew both products from the market in January 1986... but claimed there was no evidence whatever that they had caused deaths.

The spokesman for the Public Prosecutor in Frankfurt, Reinhard Rochus, has stated that, on the basis of a television programme, a detective from North Rhine-Westphalia has taken out a writ against... the Hoechst pharmaceutical company... and Dr Schneiders of the Health Department... for...

"Suspected manslaughter, bribery and corruption"

Is "Alival" in your medicine cabinet?

Acknowledgements		Sources
Tommy McCann U.K.		German TV programme 27/11/1986
Dennis B. Stuart Frankfurt (Germany)		Frankfurter Rundschau 6/12/1986