Eight bioethicists at the University of Minnesota are charging their own institution committed an "alarming series of ethical violations" in a clinical trial where a young man committed suicide in 04. the eight, including nearly half of the faculty members of the university basic Bioethics, yesterday issued a letter to the Board of regents of the University, asking the board implement an external investigation into the death of Daniel Markingson. He committed suicide violently while enrolled in a trial of antipsychotic drugs through the University Department of Psychiatry. The letter says that his death has not been adequately studied earlier.
"bioethicists should not ignore the catastrophe in their own backyard," said Mary Faith Marshall, one of the signatories. Marshall came to the University of Minnesota in 05 after serving in the political arena of federal bioethics. Among other things, she chaired a committee investigating the death of 19-year-old Jesse Gelsinger in 1999 in a gene therapy experiment at the University of Pennsylvania.
the letter has bioethicists was conducted by Carl Elliott, a permanent faculty member in the department who studies conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry. Elliott wrote a scathing article on the case in Mother Jones magazine this fall . Since there is documented Markingson was included in a clinical trial all seriously mentally ill and against the will of his mother, he also alleges that the university's psychiatry department was to gain financially by registering and remember in the trial. In a survey after the death of Markingson, the US Food and Drug Administration authorized the university of any wrongdoing and said there was no evidence that Markingson could not voluntarily consent to the study.
This has not assuaged Elliott. "For me, the main motivation is personal shame. I feel embarrassed to work at a university that would treat humans and their families in this way, "he said.
After Elliott started talking about the case in the fall, the Advocate General of the University, Mark Rotenberg, issued a statement claiming the university side of the history. The death Markingson was reviewed to varying degrees by outside investigators, he noted. "No complaints with the faculty involved, and none found no causal link" between the study and Markingson suicide.
But eight bioethicists wrote in their letter to the university that the piece Mother Jones and a 08 series in a local newspaper, the Pioneer Press " raise troubling questions that to date has not been addressed in the response of the University of the death of Mr. Markingson ".
Asked whether the university had a response to the letter, spokesman Daniel Wolter wrote in an email: "There is no additional information at this stage because it is not really something new beyond Professor Elliott repackage its position in new and different formats. "Advocate General University was not available to discuss the matter before Science Deadline Insider
After hearing the comment Wolter, Marshall said.: "I always say, when a research subject dies in one of your studies, the public and the private message should be," We're really sorry about this and we are going to do everything we can do to ensure that it never happens again. ""
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