Possible script for letter to donors regarding Markingson scandal

Dear ____, I am writing to you because you have been an exceptionally generous donor to the University of Minnesota. However, you may not be aware of serious research misconduct in the Department of Psychiatry and the failure of university officials to take any steps to remedy the problem. Many serious scholars believe that vulnerable patients are being placed at risk of death or serious injury. For this reason I am writing to ask you to consider ending your donations until the university takes action to protect these patients. You may be familiar with media reports of one of these incidents. In late 2003, psychiatric researchers at the university coerced a mentally ill young man named Dan Markingson into a research study of antipsychotic drugs sponsored by the pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca. Dan was enrolled in the study over the objections of his mother, Mary Weiss, and despite the fact that he was psychotic and unable to give proper informed consent. Even worse, Dan had been placed under an involuntary commitment order that legally compelled him to obey the recommendations of the psychiatrist who recruited him into the study. For months, Mary tried desperately to get Dan out of the study, warning that he was getting worse and that he was in danger of committing suicide. But her warnings were ignored. On April 23, 2004, she left a voice message with the study coordinator, asking, Do we have to wait for him to kill himself or someone else before anyone does anything? Three weeks later, Dans body was discovered in the shower of a halfway house, his throat slit so severely that he was nearly decapitated, along with a suicide note that said, I went through this experience smiling. For nearly ten years, the university has portrayed Dans death as an unavoidable, isolated tragedy. However, the facts suggest otherwise. The psychiatric researchers were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars for their marketing and consulting work with the pharmaceutical industry. So was the chair of the research ethics committee (Institutional Review Board) charged with protecting subjects of medical research. In addition, according to a 2012 ruling by the Minnesota Board of Social Work, the study coordinator for the research in question committed a number of serious ethical and legal violations, including falsifying the initials of physicians on study charts and failing to respond to warning that Dan was in danger of killing himself. Even worse, when a lawsuit by Mary Weiss against the university was dismissed on technical grounds of statutory immunity, the university lawyers filed a legal action against her called a notice to assess costs, demanding that she pay the University of Minnesota $57,000 in legal fees. The universitys refusal to deal honestly with the death of Dan Markingson has generated international outrage. The case has been reported in major scientific journals, including Nature, Science, The British Medical Journal, The Journal of Bioethical Inquiry and the Medical Journal of Australia. Leading figures

in the medical community, including three former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, have called on the university to conduct a credible investigation. A petition signed by over 3,500 people, many of them alumni of the University of Minnesota, has been presented to the governor. In December, in response to a letter signed by 181 leading scholars, the Faculty Senate endorsed an independent investigation of possible research misconduct in the Department of Psychiatry. In recent months, credible evidence has emerged that other mentally ill research subjects have been mistreated or harmed, including two alarming investigative reports on KMSP television. Yet the university administration continues to evade responsibility. President Kaler and other university officials have claimed the case has been repeatedly investigated and that the university was exonerated. This is untrue. With the exception of a single flawed review by the FDA, none of these exonerations actually occurred. The university administration claims to be commissioning a review of the problems, in response to the Faculty Senate resolution passed in December. However, President Kaler has made his opposition to an investigation clear for two years, and in January, he indicated that any review commissioned by the university will not include the death of Dan Markingson. Instead, it will be forward-looking and concentrate on current policies and practices. This, of course, is completely inadequate and will only reinforce the current perception that the university is hiding serious misconduct. I believe that unless influential alumni and donors put pressure on the university to deal honestly and forthrightly with these issues, patients will continue to be placed in danger. I am enclosing some background material on the case. Thank you very much for considering this request. Yours sincerely,