Published January 24, 2025
In 2023 my colleagues and I were preparing to enroll patients in a clinical trial of a new drug that promised to mitigate brain damage in stroke victims. The National Institutes of Health, a governmental organization that funds billions of dollars of research every year, had committed $30 million to the trial. The drug was, in part, the brainchild of Berislav Zlokovic, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California.
Then, suddenly, the NIH paused the trial. Charles Piller, an investigative journalist for Science magazine, had published an article alleging that multiple papers from Dr. Zlokovic, including many supporting the new drug, contained seemingly altered data. Though Dr. Zlokovic disputed some of the concerns, this news stunned us. We might have put patients at risk, while offering groundless hope. A fraud of the sort Mr. Piller described would violate the basic ethics of clinical trials and overturn the presumption of trust on which the practice of medicine relies.
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Aaron Rothstein, M.D., is a fellow in the Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is a neurovascular physician, neuroepidemiologist, and writer whose work explores the moral, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of medicine, with particular attention to the physician-patient relationship, medical ethics, stroke care, cognitive disorders, and the meaning of illness and healing.
