St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota)
The death of Subject 13
By Jeremy Olson and Paul Tosto Pioneer Press
May 18, 2008

Subject 13 was dead.
Enrolled in a clinical trial testing the effects of anti-psychotic
drugs at the University of Minnesota, the schizophrenic had killed
himself May 8, 2004, in a grisly suicide.

Tragic, a U official wrote in a "serious adverse event" memo to the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but suicide was "unfortunately not
uncommon in this study population."

Unfortunate, but not unpredicted. Subject 13 had a mother who thought
that her son, Dan Markingson, wasn't getting better during his six
months in the study. Mary Weiss sent five letters and made numerous
calls to the researchers, complaining that her son, the 13th enrollee,
didn't have the wherewithal to consent to the study and requesting
that he be withdrawn.