No Minnesota Nice For Dan Markingson

Coach is Right ^ | 1/6/15 | Michael D. Shaw

[Oldpuppymax]

In the wake of the one-year-delayed Employer Mandate kicking in on January 1st, it should be emphasized that getting everyone insured is not the biggest problem facing American health care. Far from it. If by magic, every person in the US suddenly had platinum level health insurance, they would still have to embrace a system which has the distinction of spending much more than any other country for at best mediocre outcomes.

There are many reasons for this, with Medicare heading the list. Today, though, let’s examine what can go wrong in our miserable and massively corrupted clinical trials jungle. Here, then, is the sad tale of patient Dan Markingson, under the “care” of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Psychiatry. Please note that this story is far from unique.

Markingson, who apparently came up with that last name as he descended into paranoid schizophrenia, was unfortunate enough to be forced into a clinical trial called CAFE (Comparison of Atypicals in First-Episode Schizophrenia). The work was sponsored by AstraZeneca, the manufacturer of Seroquel, and managed by Quintiles, a contract research organization. The study compared the effectiveness of three different atypical antipsychotic drugs: Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel. The University of Minnesota was one of 26 sites chosen for the year-long effort.

According to a meta-analysis published in February, 2006 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, in 90% of cases whereby atypical antipsychotics are compared, whichever drug company sponsors the study, its product comes out on top. As such, most reasonable people would question the value of such studies, unless of course...