IG Farben's body count still grows

[Mike Stinson]

Report: Bayer Unit Sold Risky Medicine


NEW YORK (Reuters) - A unit of German drug and chemical maker [and former 
member of IG Farben] Bayer AG sold medicine in Asia and Latin America in the 
1980s that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS even as it sold a safer 
medicine in the United States and Europe, the New York Times reported late 
on Wednesday. 

Citing its own review of internal memorandums, minutes of marketing 
meetings, and messages to foreign distributors, the Times reported on its 
Web Site that the unit, Cutter Biological, kept selling an old version of a 
blood clotting medicine for hemophiliacs abroad as the product became more 
difficult to market in the United States and Europe. 

The Times report on the hemophilia medicine comes in addition to a series of 
lawsuits faced by Bayer over the cholesterol drug Baycol, which was recalled 
by Bayer in August 2001. 

A spokeswoman for Bayer Healthcare in Connecticut, Meredith Fischer, said 
she could not immediately comment on the report, but said the company has 
been "heavily involved" in working with the New York Times on the story. 

The Times reported that Bayer officials said Cutter "behaved responsibly, 
ethically and humanely" when it sold the older product. 

"Decisions made nearly two decades ago were based on the best scientific 
information of the time and were consistent with the regulations in place," 
the Times quoted the Bayer statement as saying. 

The company also said it kept selling the older clotting medicine because of 
doubts by some customers about how effective the new medicine was, and the 
speed at which some countries approved the marketing of the newer version, 
the Times reported. 

Cutter is now the biological products business unit of Bayer's 
pharmaceuticals business, and is based in Research Triangle Park, North 
Carolina. 

The medicine in question, called Factor VIII concentrate, was made with 
pools of blood plasma, The Times reported, increasing the risk that it 
carried the AIDS virus since scientists at the time lacked a test that could 
screen for the disease. The newer product was heat treated in order to kill 
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. 

In one example cited by the Times, Cutter asked a Hong Kong distributor 
to "use up stocks" of the medicine that was not heat treated prior to using 
the "safer, better" medicine. In all, the company appears to have exported 
more than 100,000 vials of the older product after it began selling the 
safer product, the Times reported. 

Bayer had paid about $600 million to settle more than a decade of lawsuits 
related to the product, the Times reported. Details about the sales of the 
product in Asia and Latin America were found in documents related to that 
litigation that were not previously investigated, it said.