The prosecution calls the typhus experiments criminal, in particular, because control persons were used and above all because of the alleged “passage persons”.[[62]] As to the control persons, I explained at length in my closing brief that such vaccine experiments are impossible without the use of control subjects and lead to no practical result without them.
If one takes the Ding diary for information, it appears that in a number of test series the cultural virus used was no longer pathogenic to human beings. If no control persons had been infected, the fact that the experimental persons were not taken ill would have been explained as a consequence of the protection obtained by the vaccination. This would have led to entirely wrong deductions and to the use of inferior vaccines in practice. If one considers the typhus experiments as admissible, the use of control subjects is, therefore, indispensable. I explained this in detail in my closing brief.
On the other hand there was no justification for the use of passage persons who were infected merely in order to have live virus always on hand. I have demonstrated in my written arguments that such passage persons were never used. Until April 1943 there was no reason to use them. For until April 1943 it is stated explicitly in the Ding diary that in each series of experiments the infection was performed by means of cultural virus bred in the yolk sacs of hens’ eggs which Ding obtained from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. After 11 April 1943, Ding infected with fresh blood taken from persons suffering from typhus. But during this period, too, the use of passage persons was superfluous because Ding always had persons at his disposal who had contracted typhus spontaneously, and he could take the fresh infected blood from them.
If the prosecution had wanted to bring evidence to show that passage persons were used in Block 46, this could have been done best of all by Ding and Dietzsch. The prosecution produced statements from both in which the question of the passage persons is not mentioned. The prosecution knew from the examination of Mrugowsky on the witness stand that he denied the use of passage persons. When I said at the end of the presentation of my evidence that I did not call Dietzsch to the witness stand but only offered an affidavit from him, Mr. Hardy asked the Tribunal for permission to interrogate Dietzsch on certain facts.
However, he never produced a record of such an interrogation. This is further evidence that Dietzsch did not confirm the use of passage persons. All the witnesses who testified on the use of passage persons did not work in Block 46. They, therefore, know nothing from their own observation, but only through third persons. Dr. Morgen discovered nothing about passage persons during his investigations as an examining magistrate in Block 46 in Buchenwald. So there is no conclusive evidence of any kind to show that passage persons were used in Block 46. On the contrary, I proved in my closing brief that passage persons actually were not used.
If the Tribunal were, nevertheless, to assume that the use of passage persons was proved, there would be no guilt of Mrugowsky involved in the use of these passage persons because I demonstrated that Ding was not his subordinate in respect of his activity in Block 46, and also there is no evidence whatever to show that he even as much as knew about the use of passage persons.
In my written statements, I then dealt in detail with the experiments with acridine preparations within the framework of the typhus experiments. I proved that Ding did not obtain these preparations from Mrugowsky but from the I. G. Farbenindustrie A. G. There is no evidence whatever to show that Mrugowsky had any knowledge of these experiments performed by Ding.
Ding’s report on the acridine experiments submitted for publication was handed to Mrugowsky by Grawitz only about 18 months after the termination of the experiments. Therefore, no charge can be made against Mrugowsky under criminal law for the experiments with acridine preparations which caused a particularly high number of deaths.