Download 1993 Werner Franke While many scientists find themselves fighting

1993
Werner Franke
While many scientists find themselves fighting academic and governmental
bureaucracy to conduct their research, very few of them become personally involved in
cold war politics and secret service activities. But in 1990, German cell biologist Werner
Franke of the German Cancer Research Center found himself in the middle of one such
gigantic national cover-up when it was discovered that East German scientists performing
state-sponsored research intended to perfect the illegal use of androgenic steroids and
peptide hormone drugs to boost the performance of their athletes. In particular, these
scientists and medical doctors developed methods of application of these steroids that
would not be detectable through standard tests at international sport events.
Franke, at that time a member of a committee of the German Research Council
evaluating the research institutes of former East Germany, learned from friends the
existence of documentary proof of this research. The work involved sports institutions,
university researchers, and the East German Academy of Sciences, including its president,
a toxicologist. Rumor was that all the classified documents had safely been destroyed on
order of former East German authorities so that this part of history of science would
remain unwritten forever. Then Franke noticed that copies of some of the documents,
including six top-secret doctoral theses, still existed at the Army, in a sealed room of the
Military Medical Academy in a small town near the Polish border. With the help of his
wife Brigitte, a former German champion in discus-throwing and an Olympic Games
finalist, and also speaker of the West German track-and-field team, Franke managed to
get to the hidden documents and to bring them out and decode their contents. The reports
show that East German scientists were aware of the damaging side effects and risks that
the hormone treatments imposed, particularly on women and girls who in certain sports
such as swimming, canoeing, and throwing were treated with androgenic hormones as
young as age 13-16. Long suspected, but never fully proven, the exposure of these
documents became an international story, and Franke appeared on network news
broadcasts in the U.S. He feels the East German state had sponsored criminal research
and compares this scientific enterprise to the Nazi era. His wife Brigitte has published a
book on the scandal, Doping Documents - From Research to Cheat, which is currently
being translated into English and had to go through five injunctions and court cases, all of
which she won.
Franke's youth was more pastoral. Among his hobbies were wildlife preservation and
hunting in the German woods with his father, a railroad engineer. His exposure to
animals and the outdoors generated an early interest in the biological sciences. Franke
created his first invention at the age of 14, a device to feed hares and partridges in winter.
After high school and a brief tour of military duty, he attended the University of
Heidelberg. Franke majored in biology but also took exams in chemistry and physics
where he concentrated on optical methods. In 1966, while still a student, he published his
first (single-authored) article in the Journal of Cell Biology entitled "Isolated Nuclear
Membranes."
In 1967, upon completion of his Ph.D. at Heidelberg, Franke took a position at the
University of Freiburg as an Assistant Professor, and later Associate Professor, in the
Department of Cell Biology. Franke enjoyed teaching, but found the German system of
teaching science to be over-structured and intellectually stifling. He feels that science
teaching in Germany, from grade school through higher education, still places too much
emphasis on textbooks and memorization, which he believes turns off many young
imaginative German students from pursuing careers in science.
In 1973, Franke was appointed Professor and Head of a Research Division at the German
Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. The basic aim of his work is to understand the
molecular basis of cell and tissue architecture, what makes a cell look and act as it does.
Franke served as Acting Director of the Institute of Cell and Tumor Biology at the
German Cancer Research Center from 1980-1991.
Franke's other professional service includes the presidency of the European Cell Biology
Organization ECBO (1982-1990), and vice presidentcy of the International Federation of
Cell Biology (ICFB). He considers his years with ECBO, the multinational umbrella of
national cell biology science organizations, particularly interesting and important, as
scientists were then separated by the Iron Curtain. Franke says that ECBO's great
accomplishment was maintaining contact between cell biologists of the East and the West
and getting the countries of Europe to facilitate the development of cell biology by
organizing international congresses and workshops.
From 1985-1987, Franke served as President of the International Society of
Differentiation (ISD), which he characterizes as a forum to investigate different types of
cell differentiation over the entire plant and animal kingdom, including medical aspects
as in carcinogenesis.
Among the many honors he has received, Franke values the Ernst Jung Prize for Medical
Research in 1984 especially highly; he received the award jointly with his colleague
Klaus Weber from the Max-Planck-Institute in Goettingen.
Franke has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals, including Cell,
Differentiation, European Journal of Cancer, European Journal of Cell Biology,
Experimental Cell Research, Gene Expression, and the Journal of Cell Biology, where he
currently serves as the Associate Editor heading the European office.
Having been witness to some of the most exciting developments in European science,
Franke is heartened by the high level of cell research currently being conducted
throughout Europe. He believes that the better known institutions in Europe are now
similar in quality to U.S. universities. One advantage of European science is that funding
is somewhat more reliable than in the U.S. system of "over-competitive" grants.
Father to a daughter, Friederike, and a son, Ulrich, Franke is a prolific reader and has a
particularly keen interest in literature on German history. Unusual for a scientist, he has
been asked by the German Parliament to write the official historic report of the
manipulations of science and