The University of Minnesota is replacing its Psychiatry Department chairman following two scathing reviews of its safety protocols in research involving human subjects and its recruitment of a troubled man who later died by suicide in a schizophrenia drug trial.
Dr. Charles Schulz will continue clinical care and research in the department he has led since 1999, but Thursday's announcement that he is stepping down reflects a metamorphosis for a university that even a month ago adamantly defended his department against claims of coercive recruiting of vulnerable patients into research.
"Changing one person — it's not like switching a light switch" and problems will be fixed, said Leigh Turner, a U bioethicist who has demanded changes in top university administration due to the episode. "But there is a symbolic dimension to it. A chair is a symbolic face of a department. And this is a department that has been through a long period of controversy and questions about the conduct of its clinical trials."
Much of the criticism has centered on the recruitment of Dan Markingson, who died by suicide in 2004 while enrolled in the university's arm of a national study of three antipsychotic drugs. Markingson was recruited at the time by Dr. Stephen Olson, a psychiatrist who was treating him as well as running the study and advising a judge on whether Markingson should be committed to a locked inpatient facility. Legislation following news coverage of the case in 2008 prohibited this type of potentially coercive recruiting.
Perceptions that the U had put the problem behind it were shattered in February when an external review, ordered by the university's Faculty Senate, found that the school's efforts to safeguard patients in psychiatric research remain inadequate and do not "reflect the best efforts of a University of this caliber."
A month later, Legislative Auditor James Nobles issued a report criticizing the way Markingson was enrolled in his study and retained even after his mother expressed concerns over his condition.
University President Eric Kaler responded by publicly apologizing to Markingson's family and suspending recruitment to new psychiatric studies until completion of a review of patient safety protocols.
The controversy was not mentioned in a statement Thursday by Dr. Brooks Jackson, dean of the U's Medical School, who commended Schulz and said the decision to step down was solely made by the psychiatrist to "clear the way for new leadership, and to allow him to focus more on clinical care."
