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Werner Franke, Who Exposed East German Doping Program, Dies at 82

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In the 1990s, he and his wife unearthed documentary evidence of the illicit, state-sponsored drug program that propelled the country to Olympic glory.

Dr. Werner Franke at a conference in Germany in 2015. He and his wife exposed the state-sponsored doping program that brought East Germany Olympic glory in the 1970s and ’80s.Credit...Daniel Karmann/picture-alliance/dpa, via Associated Press

Werner Franke, an esteemed molecular biologist who, with his wife, exposed many of the details of East Germany’s state-sponsored, illicit athlete doping program that brought the country a striking surge of Olympic glory in the 1970s and ’80s, died on Nov.