Offering accounts of unethical clinical trials, University of Minnesota professor Carl Elliott warned students and faculty at Harvard Medical School Thursday night about the dangers of mixing healthcare and business.

Elliott, a bioethicist and doctor at the University of Minnesota, spoke about his recent book “White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine,” which critiques the increasing role that big businesses play in medicine.

“What happens when you turn medicine into a business?” Dr. Elliott said. “Well, what happens is that you get a lot of scams and swindles and con artists.”

Elliott said he was motivated to pursue his research after reading a 2005 industry-funded drug study that raised bioethics concerns. He argues that in the study, the University of Minnesota coerced a 26-year-old psychiatric patient, Dan Markingson, into participating in a clinical trial despite repeated objections from his mother, who said that her son would commit suicide because of the medication. Markingson died by suicide a few months later.

Read the full article at The Harvard Crimson