Heinrich Mückter

Heinrich Mückter (born June 14, 1914 in Körrenzig ; † May 22, 1987 in Aachen ) was a German physician, pharmacologist and chemist . The Polish judiciary accused him of medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners and Nazi forced laborers . He escaped arrest by fleeing to the western occupation zones. He became publicly known in his role as scientific director at the Stolberg pharmaceutical company Grünenthal , where the sleeping pill and sedative Contergan (see Contergan scandal ) was developed under his leadership .

Life

In 1933 he became a member of the SA and in 1937 a member of the NSDAP . During the Second World War he was medical officer and deputy director of the Institute for Typhus and Virus Research of the Army High Command under Hermann Eyer in Krakow . The Weigl vaccine against typhus was produced there using inhuman methods . During the “medical experiments”, concentration camp prisoners were abused as test subjects, and quite a few died. Polish slave laborers died as hosts for the pathogen lice. In 1946, the Krakow public prosecutor's office issued an arrest warrant for Heinrich Mückter, whom he escaped by fleeing to the western occupation zones.

From June 1946 Heinrich Mückter worked at Grünenthal GmbH in Stolberg. Under circumstances that were never entirely clear, he had managed to get hold of a penicillin strain in England and thus set up a penicillin production in Stolberg, which at that time developed into a flourishing branch of Grünenthal's business.

The substance N-phthalylglutamic acid amide, which was named thalidomide , was later developed there under his direction . Thalidomide was the basis of the sleeping and sedative thalidomide , which was put on the market on October 1, 1957, was as a non-prescription drug in Germany often applied to pregnant women. Thalidomide was not only the basis for Contergan, but was also added to preparations such as Grippex and Algosediv . Contergan is responsible for the malformations of around 5,000-10,000 newborn children born in the late 1950s / early 1960s, as well as numerous miscarriages. Furthermore, there was very serious nerve damage in adults after ingestion. The human geneticist Widukind Lenz called Mückter on November 15, 1961 and requested that the drug be withdrawn. According to a newspaper article in Die Welt am Sonntag on November 26, 1961, Grünenthal finally withdrew Contergan from trading the following day . In January 1968, Mückter and other responsible employees of Grünenthal GmbH were brought to trial. This ended in April 1970 with a settlement.

Mückter was never charged with human experiments. He died on May 22, 1987 and found his final resting place in the Aachen forest cemetery . His son Harald Mückter (1952–2020) was also a doctor and pharmacologist and head of the research group Cellular Toxicology and Toxicokinetics at LMU Munich . He made an active contribution to clearing up the thalidomide story.

Web links

• The inventor of Contergan

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 418.
2. ↑ Gregor Taxacher: Success story with a catastrophic flaw ( WDR )
3. ↑ Cf. Gregor Taxacher: Success story with catastrophic flaws ( WDR ) with photo by Heinrich Mückter
4. ↑ Pharma-Brief 1/1999 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the BUKO Pharma campaign 
5. ↑ Klara van Eyll : From the copper yard to pharmaceutical research. The Grünenthal farm and the Wirtz family. In: the scales. Magazine of Grünenthal GmbH, Aachen. Volume 35, 1996, number 2 (pp. 45-88), pp. 53 f.
6. ↑ Holger Kraneis: Mushrooms, Penicillin and Pioneering Spirit . A modern pharmaceutical company grew out of the post-war emergency aid. In: the scales. Magazine of Grünenthal GmbH, Aachen . Volume 35, 1996, number 2 (pp. 45-88: 50 years Grünenthal), pp. 58-65, here: pp. 60 f.
7. ↑ Star No. 45 2007, p. 183
8. ↑ Facsimile of the original article from 1961 contained in this review: Welt Online on November 21, 2011: The "harmless" sleeping pill and the great scandal. Retrieved November 26, 2011 . 
9. ↑ PD Dr. med. Dr. rer. nat. Harald Mückter. (No longer available online.) LMU Munich, archived from the original on August 5, 2016 ; accessed on August 5, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ "Humanity will win". Retrieved August 5, 2016 .