Institutional Pathology and the Death of Dan Markingson

ABSTRACT

In the spring of 2015, 11 years after a mentally ill young man named Dan Markingson stabbed himself to death in an industry-sponsored drug study, officials at the University of Minnesota suspended recruitment of subjects into drug trials in its Department of Psychiatry. University officials agreed to act only after a scathing investigation by Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor found damning evidence of coerced recruitment, inadequate clinical care, superficial research oversight, a web of serious, disturbing conflicts of interest, and a pattern of misleading public statements by university officials aimed at deflecting scrutiny. In this article, I examine the larger institutional factors leading up to Markingson’s suicide and prevented corrective action for so long.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict of interest
• human subjects ethics
• human subjects regulation and oversight
• informed consent
• misconduct in research
• organizational and institutional ethics
• research ethics
• research ethics in university contexts
• research on the mentally ill
• vulnerable populations

Notes

¹ This narrative is taken from Elliott (2010) and Office of the Legislative Auditor 2015.