The Silence of the Bioethicists
        
            By Leigh Turner, 
                Impact Ethics
             | 03. 24. 2014
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            Last week, Kirstin Borgerson, a philosopher at Dalhousie University, published a 
thoughtful commentary on my colleague Carl Elliott’s 
persistent call for an investigation of Dan Markingson’s death and psychiatric research misconduct at the University of Minnesota. Dan Markingson was a young man from St. Paul who 
committed suicide by nearly decapitating himself while enrolled in a psychiatric drug study at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview.In analyzing the audience’s response to Carl’s public lecture, alongside the typical response of her undergraduate students, Borgerson notes that there was no animated discussion of ethical issues in the Markingson case because “very simply, there is nothing to debate.” Borgerson adds,
Among serious scholars, there is no defense of the practice of: radically violating informed consent …; enrolling suicidal patients in the sort of risky trial that Markingson was enrolled in; having researchers disrespect and disregard concerns raised by family members about the well-being of research subjects during a trial; or creating conditions under which researchers are motivated to enroll subjects so as not to lose out on tens of thousands of...
 
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
      Related Articles
    
  
          
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
            
                  
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Megan Molteni and Anil Oza,  STAT | 10.07.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            For two years, a panel of scientific experts, clinicians, and patient advocates had been hammering out ways to increase community engagement in National Institutes of Health-funded science. When they presented their road map to the NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya last...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Abby McCloskey,  The Dallas Morning News | 10.10.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            We Texans like to do things our way — leave some hide on the fence rather than stay corralled, as goes a line in Wallace O. Chariton’s Texas dictionary This Dog’ll Hunt. Lately, I’ve been wondering what this ethos...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
    
    
            Paula Amato & Shoukhrat Mitalipov
[OHSU News/Christine Torres Hicks]
On September 30th, a team of 21 scientists from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) published a significant paper in Nature Communications, with a scientifically accurate but, to many, somewhat abstruse headline:
Induction of experimental cell division to generate cells with reduced chromosome ploidy
The lead authors were Shoukhrat Mitalipov, recently described here as “a push-the-envelope biologist,” and his long-term colleague Paula Amato. (Recall that in July the pair had co-published with...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Émile P. Torres,  Truthdig | 10.17.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            The Internet philosopher Eliezer Yudkowsky has been predicting the end of the world for decades. In 1996, he confidently declared that the singularity — the moment at which computers become more “intelligent” than humanity — would happen in 2021, though...