More On Continuing Disgrace of

the University of Minnesota

and Drug Trials

From Covering Health, Keeping Health Care Journalists Informed and Connected:

Writing for Mother Jones, University of Minnesota medical ethics professor Carl Elliott digs into the Dan Markingson story first covered by St. Paul Pioneer Press reporters Jeremy Olson and Paul Tosto. Elliott works at the same institution as the physicians who who administered a Seroquel trial that the 26-year-old was enrolled in when he committed suicide.

Given his teaching field and institution, it’s not surprising that Elliot couldn’t stay away from the Markingson story.

…the more I examined the medical and court records, the more I became convinced that the problem was worse than the Pioneer Press had reported. The danger lies not just in the particular circumstances that led to Dan’s death, but in a system of clinical research that has been thoroughly co-opted by market forces, so that many studies have become little more than covert instruments for promoting drugs. The study in which Dan died starkly illustrates the hazards of market-driven research and the inadequacy of our current oversight system to detect them.

Elliot goes after the idea that the new wave of anti-psychotics was any safer than its predecessors, then explains the clinical trial manipulations he says were used to claim they were.

From there, Elliot takes on the use of clinical trials for marketing purposes. Clinical trials can be dangerous, which is theoretically acceptable if they have the potential to advance medical care. But what if patients are just being exposed to those dangers in an effort to sell more drugs?