A Minneapolis hospital tested powerful antipsychotics and the potent anesthetic ketamine on emergency room patients without their knowledge or consent, violating regulations on human research, federal inspectors have determined.
Based on those findings, a health watchdog group on Monday urged federal regulators to suspend all clinical trials at the hospital. In a letter to the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services office that protects human research subjects, Public Citizen also called for regulators to immediately launch an investigation into the conduct and oversight of the studies and “impose severe sanctions for the serious ethical and regulatory lapses that have occurred in the ketamine clinical trials and other studies” at Minneapolis’s Hennepin County Medical Center.
The hospital committee that green-lighted the studies, called an institutional review board (IRB), “appears incapable of doing its job,” said Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, who organized the letter. It acted unethically and placed patients in danger, he said, “including by waiving the requirement for informed consent in situations where that is not allowed.”
A hospital spokesperson said the findings by inspectors from the FDA “are neither formal nor conclusory.” Hennepin “has provided formal written responses to each” of the inspectors’ findings, she said, adding that the hospital “has undertaken several reviews by independent experts to evaluate its research and emergency medical practices with the intent to improve our processes. …We understand our mission includes providing the highest standards of medical care, and also conducting studies that help to continuously improve the health and wellness of our patients.”
Among other violations identified by FDA inspectors, the IRB ruled that researchers did not need consent to make patients part of a clinical trial in which they were given antipsychotic drugs that they might not receive as part of usual care. The Public Citizen letter said the IRB, which is legally obligated to protect research participants, “appears to lack even a basic understanding of federal regulations for the protection of human subjects and is clearly incapable of fulfilling its obligation” to do so.
In July, Public Citizen and 64 bioethicists, physicians, and other scholars submitted a complaint about two of Hennepin’s ketamine studies to the FDA and HHS’s Office of Human Research Protections. In August, FDA sent inspectors to the hospital.
Their report, obtained by Public Citizen through a public records request and shared with STAT, examined additional clinical trials beyond those initially flagged. It found that in four, the hospital IRB “did not determine that informed consent would be sought from each prospective subject” as required by law, while in another five, the IRB granted fast-track review to studies that didn’t qualify for it.
At least three of the studies cited by the FDA inspectors involved people brought to the emergency room with “severe” agitation, as assessed by emergency technicians using criteria developed by the researchers. The study leaders apparently persuaded the IRB that such patients could not provide informed consent, and so could be swept into the trial unknowingly.
In fact, such patients are considered “vulnerable,” said bioethicist Leigh Turner of the University of Minnesota, who signed the Public Citizen letter. According to federal law, they are supposed to receive special safeguards, such as having a family member or other representative give or decline consent. That did not happen.
Just as concerning, Turner said, it’s not clear that the patients were in fact too agitated to be asked for their consent, as the scientists argued to the IRB. According to the evaluation form’s scoring, “it’s not like they had acute psychosis,” Turner said. “These investigators were basically drugging up individuals with a degree of agitation many of us could experience, like after being pulled over for speeding.”
In the first study cited by the FDA inspectors, researchers injected either ketamine or haloperidol into people taken to the ER, to reduce their “agitation.” Ketamine is not approved by the FDA for that use. The unwitting participants were treated not according to clinicians’ best judgment but according to the study’s protocol: Those arriving during certain months got ketamine and those arriving in other months got haloperidol.
Among the trial’s results was that some patients given ketamine suffered breathing problems; 39 percent required intubation, compared to 4 percent given haloperidol. Before the trial began, its leaders had warned in a 2013 paper that ketamine can impair breathing and so should be reserved for only the most severely agitated patients.
The identities of five of the seven studies the FDA report flagged are redacted, but one corresponds to the second ketamine clinical trial questioned in Public Citizen’s letter. It compared ketamine to midazolam, also in “agitated” ER patients given one or the other drug essentially randomly, not according to which — if any — might help them. The study was suspended by the medical center in June, for unclear reasons, but it also failed to obtain informed consent from participants, the FDA inspectors found.
A third clinical trial compared the safety and efficacy of four drugs (the antipsychotics olanzapine, haloperidol, and ziprasidone and the sedative midazolam) in agitated patients. The hospital scientists had initially requested an FDA waiver from the informed consent requirement. FDA denied the request. The scientists then requested IRB approval, calling their study observational (meaning patients would be treated according to their doctors’ best judgment rather than receiving drugs as per the trial protocol) and therefore entitled to “expedited review.” The IRB agreed, including giving the okay to forgo consent.
In fact the study was not observational: Patients received one of the four drugs based on when they arrived in the ER. They were not informed of this, and so were unwitting participants, the FDA inspectors found.
“When the investigators didn’t get FDA clearance, they did an end-run around the agency,” Turner said. “They claimed it was no longer the randomized controlled trial they’d planned, and then pushed it through the IRB as a waiver-of-consent study,” a strategy he called “dodgy.”
The FDA inspectors found that “some or all of the subjects [in four studies] were likely to be vulnerable to coercion or undue influence,” yet the IRB did not require the researchers to do anything to safeguard the participants’ safety.
In addition to asking HHS to suspend all clinical trials at Hennepin unless doing so would harm participants, Public Citizen called it “imperative” that the hospital disband its current IRB and train a new one, retrain researchers involved in human research, and inform the unwitting participants in past trials of steps “to redress these violations.”
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my name is shannonleesimmonsmy dob 619171 my sisters dob 7231965 in 2015 to 2020 i got my indenty stolein in hennpin county for enbellzellmet and alongtheyalso stole all 50 of my family member meducal indenty and have been getting me sick for 3 years seen june of 2015 poeple that enployeed at henpin county and all other hopials in minnoplias mn in a protushion ring hub traffic porn are enployed at hennpin meducail center and goverment center red biolding sign up for meducal reseach im class that slode my indenty fro enbellzellmet . and also have jops at minnoplias human serives minnoplias goverment center and minnpopliascrourt house please do everything tomake no one in my famly get sick over other poeplecrimes shannon lee simmons dob619171 sandy simmons oct 23rd 1969
My daughter was given ketamine by IV push in the emergency room for pain. Her immediate reaction was hallucination. Her pain doctor has confirmed this. She began screaming and flailing her arms while on a gurney in the ER hallway. When nurses tried to stop her she accidentally pushed one nurse with her flat hand and scratched another nurse on the arm. Upon waking up she could not feel her teeth or her hands. She has been charged with assault and battery for this incident. She has been offered a plea of disorderly person. She is on medicaid, cannot afford a trial. Her health is a concern. She has been diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, fibromyalgia, atrial fibrillation, and IBS, all of which have become worse from the anxiety caused by this incident. Put this in your discussions about approving ketamine for use other than depression and anesthesia. By the way, she told the nurse that she didn’t think she should have the ketamine. She did not give consent, but the nurse gave it to her anyway.
This is every bit as glaringly awful, obscene, malicious and deranged as the actions of the drug cartels in Mexico.
This is physicians thinking they understand clinical research just because of a medical degree. Talk to anyone on the clinical operations side and they will tell you how many physicians refuse to take basic GCP tests.
Another story you could write about is how many physicians outright refuse to review SUSARs and AEs. They pain pharma as evil, yet when it comes down to it, they won’t do the work. Last week I had a physician tell me he wouldn’t review anymore SUSARs unless we amended his contract to pay him more…
Talk to your colleagues on the clin ops side of pharma or CROs.
Some of these guys even have their hospitals draft policies stating they will not require them to review SUSARs. It is insane what they are allowed to get away with just because they are “doctors”
Myself and Countless others with Co occurring diagnoses and on disability have been and continue to be Nonconsentualy Experimented on beginning with the former administration. Never in my life have I needed to Return multiple Medications, and filed formal grievances. I am more disabled than I ever have been and No one has taken any responsibility, even though the heavy metals test my primary ordered came back positive for Trioxide, Cadmium, Cephalon, and probably other “nano-chip” materials not tested for. The Teva manufacturer denied Any formulary changes what so ever when they bought out Barr pharma. I gained 30#s in one month which I haven’t lost, along with edema so severe as to warrant ER visits. I waited 3mos to see a neurologist only to be told she couldn’t help me because my doctor didn’t give me chelation therapy. I had even returned an Oxycodone precription by KVK as it nearly gave me an aneurysm. Anyone with a compromised immune system should never be Covertly given synthetic Arsenic in ADHD Medication for Chronic illnesses. We are being horrifically, Nonconsentualy and unethically Damaged without any warning or consent. Bombblasted With infamous Toxins, as well as Targeted 24/7 with Covert and exploitative Carcinogenic EMFs. I am being Tortured and destroyed by my own government and my basic human and Constitutional RIGHTS violated beyond description. There is a silent Hi-Tech Holocaust directed at those of us most vulnerable. The Damage to my brain is reflected in my recent brain MRI which is very Abnormal implying either. MS, or ALS. This is “Public” Hellth care ?
Totally illegal actions on the IRB and physicians part. Worked in many clinical trial settings and the IRB must be the gatekeeper. The physicians do not dictate to the IRB how the study will be run; where’s all the regulatory paperwork?? If the hospital IRB is to be dissolved the institution can contract with Western IRB in the meantime. It sounds like the physician researchers think they can run the show.
Worked for a doc like that once and the regulatory person and I, the site manager, left after calling our site attorney. We were called ” not team players” LOL. We were given nice severance packages though….not long after the IRB pulled the plug on that doctor’s studies.
I agree with timmay (above), that those involved should be prosecuted. This goes against all medical ethics in addition to the legal implications such as asault.
There should be legal prosecution of the individuals involved but you know there won’t be.