About this item
Shocking cases of abusive medical research and the whistleblowers who spoke out against them, sometimes at the expense of their careers. The Occasional Human Sacrifice is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle that whistleblowers face, and why it is not the kind of struggle that most people imagine. Carl Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy. For many years he fought for an external inquiry into a psychiatric research study at his own university in which an especially vulnerable patient lost his life. Elliott's efforts alienated friends and colleagues. The university stonewalled him and denied wrongdoing until a state investigation finally vindicated his claims. His experience frames the six stories in this book of medical research in which patients were deceived into participating in experimental programs they did not understand, many of which had astonishing and well-concealed mortality rates.
About the Author
Carl Elliott prefers to write about himself in the third person in order to give the impression that he is too important to submit his own biography. A native South Carolinian, Elliott teaches bioethics and philosophy at the University of Minnesota and writes occasionally for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and Slate.com. His estranged younger brother ridicules him periodically at the unfortunate website, www.whitecoatblackhat.com. His attorneys are addressing the situation.
