Premature babies were among thousands of hospital patients in East Germany used as guinea pigs in drugs trials by Western pharmaceutical companies during the Cold War era, according to researchers who combed through security and medical files...The research used newly available files from the Stasi, the East German state secret security service, as well as previously unpublished documents from the East German health ministry and pharmaceutical institute...Sanofi said that the studies complied with standards applicable at the time. It added: "The study with Trental was a multinational study, which was carried out in Belgium, Finland, West Germany, Italy, Sweden and Yugoslavia in 14 study centres. In the former GDR two study centres were involved with 21 patients. In the multinational study 12 patients died but only two of them came from the former GDR."...A spokeswoman from Roche said..."Roche is fully committed to the application of principles, rules and guidelines to ensure that companies apply high ethical standards to their research activities,"..."At the moment we do not have any direct information showing misconduct from the Spiegel research. However, we will look again at the archives from this case to confirm the details of the implementation of the clinical trials."