Friends, family, colleagues, keen university students, and those who are simply interested in bioethics gathered at the Bahen Center on Thursday to hear the inaugural Olivieri lecture on bioethics. More than 60 people were in attendance, including Dr. Nancy Olivieri, for whose father the lecture series was named.
Bioethics professor Carl Elliot delivered the inaugural Olivieri lecture. MEDIA PHOTO
The Harry Crowe Foundation, a branch of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) was involved in sponsoring this event. James Turk, executive director of the CAUT and secretary of the foundation, explained that the Harry Crowe Foundation was created in order to promote academic freedom. After the death of her father, Nancy Olivieri asked her friends and family to donate to the foundation in his honour. The Harry Crowe Foundation created the lecture series with those donations. Olivieri was herself involved in an academic freedom case regarding clinical trials funded by U of T and a pharmaceutical company called Apotex. This case brought her in contact with the CAUT and, eventually, the Harry Crowe Foundation.
After becoming concerned that the drug she was testing was ineffective and possibly harmful, Olivieri revealed her findings to her patients and the wider academic community. Olivieri was working at U of T at the time. Facing legal charges from Apotex for disclosing this information, Dr. Olivieri turned to the CAUT for support — having, according to her, received none from the university or the hospital where the research was conducted. The association has been supporting her ever since.
The lecture is expected to occur annually and be hosted by various universities. The University of Toronto was the host of its first event. “It seemed appropriate with Dr. Olivieri’s previous connection to the university,” explained Turk.
The inaugural guest lecturer was Dr. Carl Elliott, a professor of bioethics from the University of Minnesota. His talk, titled, “A Clinical Trial, a Suicide and a Cover-Up: The Death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota” presented an incident which happened at his university in 2003. He argued that the interference of pharmaceutical companies in academic and clinical research proved fatal for one of the test subjects, a young man by the name of Dan Markingson.
In 2003, Markingson, aged 26, was admitted to Fairview Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota after experiencing his first psychotic episode. He was declared to be incompetent of making his own decisions. His later involvement in a drug study conducted by Dr. Stephen Olson of the University of Minnesota for AstraZeneca caused his condition to worsen. In April of 2004, Dan Markingson committed suicide.
The university launched no formal investigation, and it denied any connection between the study and Markingson’s death.
Elliott then proceeded to provide evidence of the infringements he claimed are committed by the university academics and pharmaceutical companies involved, including: conflicts of interest, lack of consideration for protocol, and data manipulation.
The industry’s manipulation of results and use of university professors as researchers has allegedly led to biased results in some instances. It has also allegedly impacted academics’ ability to control what they disclose and how they conduct their clinical trials.
Elliott alleged that these are issues that have come up not only at the University of Minnesota, but also at other institutions, including U of T.
Elliott stated that despite the alleged little accountability demonstrated by Minnesota for Dan Markingson’s death, giving up on the case is not an option for him.
“We don’t have anything close to the real story,” he said.
The presentation was followed by a reception in celebration of the launch of the academic initiative. Olivieri remarked that she was particularly pleased with the lecture.
