Mother Jones: The Deadly Corruption of Clinical Trials

[marmar]

When you risk life and limb to help test a drug, are you helping science—or Big Pharma? One patient's tragic, and telling, story.

— By Carl Elliott


IT'S NOT EASY TO WORK UP a good feeling about the institution that destroyed your life, which may be why Mary Weiss initially seemed a little reluctant to meet me. "You can understand my hesitation to look other than with suspicion at anyone associated with the University of Minnesota," Mary wrote to me in an email. In 2003, Mary's 26-year-old son, Dan, was enrolled against her wishes in a psychiatric drug study at the University of Minnesota, where I teach medical ethics. Less than six months later, Dan was dead. I'd learned about his death from a deeply unsettling newspaper series by St. Paul Pioneer Press reporters Jeremy Olson and Paul Tosto that suggested he was coerced into a pharmaceutical-industry study from which the university stood to profit, but which provided him with inadequate care. Over the next few months, I talked to several university colleagues and administrators, trying to learn what had happened. Many of them dismissed the story as slanted and incomplete. Yet 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.

Mary Weiss is a slight, white-haired woman in her late sixties who smiles ruefully at any question, no matter how painful. She is the sort of Minnesota liberal who volunteers for political campaigns and signs her email with flowers. When we first met at a coffee shop in St. Paul, she was wearing an Obama pin on her sweater. Mary raised Dan alone, working a job at the postal service. Old photographs show Dan growing into his good looks; according to Mary, he was also a gifted student. In high school, Dan got a perfect score on the verbal portion of his SAT. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 2000 with an English degree, and that fall he moved to Los Angeles, hoping to become a screenwriter or an actor. To support himself, he got a job as a celebrity-tour bus driver.

When Mary went out to Los Angeles for a visit in the summer of 2003, it was clear Dan had changed. He'd adopted a new last name, Markingson. His behavior was bizarre. "He said, 'You haven't told me when the event is going to be,'" Mary said. She had no idea what he was talking about. The next day, he took her to his apartment. He'd encircled his bed with wooden posts, salt, candles, and money, which he said would protect him from evil spirits. He showed her a spot on the carpet that he said the aliens had burned. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/09/dan-markingson-drug-trial-astrazeneca

[Odin2005]

1. Shit, I accidently unrec'd this!

[Iterate]

2. got your back

damned difficult read.

[Mimosa]

3. Mother Jones is doing real reporting!

Interesting article.

[femrap]

4. K and r...nt