Suppose a university psychiatrist had been exposed
by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in
2009 for manipulating research results in an AstraZeneca Seroquel study, exposed
again in 2011 by City Pages for
distorting another AstraZeneca study, and had been co-investigator on a third,
even more notorious AstraZeneca study in which a psychotic young man was coerced
into a clinical trial over the objections of his mother and eventually
committed suicide. Would you have any
ethical concerns when he began recruiting subjects for yet another AstraZeneca
study of Seroquel?
Not the University of Minnesota. AstraZeneca may have paid a
half-billion dollars to settle federal fraud charges, but Charles Schulz is still
recruiting – this time, for a clinical trial of Seroquel XR for borderline
personality disorder. (The
consent form can be seen here.) University administrators have consistently supported Schulz and his colleague Steven Olson throughout these controversies. (See here, here, here, and here.
I have asked my bioethics colleagues
with the research ethics consultation service to look into the issue, but they have refused.
Unbelievable. And yet, familiar...
ReplyDeleteMaybe you just aren't willing to pay the research ethics consultation service enough? Is that it?