The Health Law, Ethics & Policy Seminar Series
presents
Carl Elliott
Professor, Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota
“The Clinical Trial as a Pharmaceutical Marketing Tool”
Thursday, September 29, 2011
12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
78 Queen’s Park, Flavelle House, Classroom B
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C5
Map
Everyone is welcome to attend, no registration is required.
ABSTRACT
When a young man committed suicide in an industry-sponsored clinical trial of atypical antipsychotic drugs at the University of Minnesota in 2004, critics charged that he had been coerced into the study. They may be right, but the ethical problem is even larger. Today pharmaceutical companies are designing and analyzing clinical trials not to produce reliable scientific data, but to ensure that their own drugs look superior to the competition. These trials are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and distributed by drug reps as a way of marketing the drugs. Which raises the question: when is it ethically justified to enroll human subjects in marketing studies?
BIOGRAPHY
Carl Elliott is a professor in the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota and the author of Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream and White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine. His articles have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The London Review of Books, Mother Jones, and The New England Journal of Medicine. He was a 2011 recipient of the Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. In 2011-2012, he will be a Network Fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.
A light lunch will be served.
For other upcoming seminars, see the schedule online or contact m.casco@utoronto.ca.
The Health Law Ethics and Policy Workshop series brings local, national, international scholars and policy makers as guest speakers to the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto to stimulate discussion of issues related to the intersection of law with health care and related ethical and social issues. The series is organized by the Faculty’s Health Law group and is sponsored by the CIHR Training Program in Health Law, Ethics and Policy. The training program addresses the global shortage of experts in the multidisciplinary field of health law, ethics and policy by providing key learning opportunities and competitive scholarships to outstanding Canadian and international graduate students. For more information about the seminar series and/or the training program, please visit our website at: www.healthlawtraining.ca.
