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There was, consequently, an urgent need for finding a way to greatly
expand the production of this substance.
For several years previously
Farben’s Behring-Werke, among others, had been experimenting with the
possibility of breeding typhus baccilli in chicken eggs, and a process based on
that idea had been developed, whereby a trained technician could in a single
day produce enough vaccine to treat 15,000 persons. This vaccine lacked
scientific verification and acceptance by the medical profession, however, and
Farben was extremely anxious to win this recognition for its product. To that
end it participated in conferences with governmental health agencies and urged
that its product be tested and accepted.
Through the years Farben had
developed a more or less routine method for testing the efficacy of its
pharmaceutical discoveries after these had passed the research stage. If it was
believed that a new drug had probable medicinal value and that it could be used
without harmful results, samples were sent to recognized physicians for testing
on patients afflicted with the particular disease with which the remedy was
designed to cope. These physicians, in turn, submitted detailed reports
covering their experiences with the drug, after which Farben scientists
assembled and studied this data and concluded therefrom whether the firm would
sponsor the product and place it on the market. The prosecution does not deny
that this was the procedure generally followed by Farben. It asserts, however,
that the circumstances surrounding the testing of Farben’s vaccine, as
well as with respect to its acridine, rutenol, and methylene blue, in combating
typhus discloses that the defendants Hoerlein, Lautenschlaeger, and Mann, in
particular, well knew that concentration-camp inmates were being criminally
infected with the typhus virus by SS doctors for the deliberate purpose of
conducting experiments with these Farben products.
The facts and
circumstances principally relied upon by the prosecution to establish guilty
knowledge on the part of said defendants may be summarized as follows: (1)
criminal experiments were admittedly conducted by SS physicians on
concentration-camp inmates; (2) said experiments were performed for the
specific purpose of testing Farben products; (3) some of said experiments were
conducted by physicians to whom Farben had entrusted the responsibility of
testing the efficacy of its drugs; (4) the reports made by said physicians were
calculated to indicate that illegal experiments had been conducted; and (5)
drugs were shipped by Farben directly to concentration camps in such quantities
as to indicate that these were to be used for illegitimate purposes.
Without going into detail to justify a negative factual conclusion, we
may say that the evidence falls short of establishing the guilt of said
defendants on this issue beyond a reasonable doubt. The infer- [...ence]
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1171 |
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