BERLIN: Police said they would look into allegations that East Germany’s most prestigious hospital injected male hormones into young girls in an effort to tum them into record-breaking athletes.
The spokeswoman of the Berlin Justice Ministry Uta Foelster said an “appraisal” would be made of the alleged activities to see if they amounted to a case of bodily harm.
The controversy centers on the Charite University Clinic a skyscraper facility in East Berlin that was the most famous and best-equipped hospital in the former German Democratic Republic
A leading German microbiologist Dr.Wemer Franke said on nationwide television on Tuesday that he had a list of athletes from the ex-communist state who had been given the hormones.
“Secret experiments were carried out on young girls who were injected with male hormones and are now top-class athletes” he said.
Among them were a number of competitors at this week’s World Athletic Championships in Tokyo he said. He declined to mention names but said that 100-meter gold medalist Katrin Krabbe was not among them.
The head of the medical faculty at East Berlin’s Humboldt University which is responsible for the hospital fought back against the accusations
Dr.Harald Mau said that the Charite had never practised sports medicine and that no hormone tests had ever taken place there. He suggested that other hospitals may have engaged in such activities using a former Charite doctor who had been fired a long time ago.
Dr.Mau also angrily denied macabre allegations that the Charite removed organs from dying patients for transplant in other people.
According to press reports four terminally ill persons were deliberately brought long distances to the Charite and their organs were removed before they were brain dead.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 20, 1991
