For more information, contact:
Mona S. Rowe, 631 344-5056

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May 21, 2002

Electronic newsroom

02-43

  

Author Susan Quinn to Give Talk at Brookhaven Lab On Experimental Drug Trials, June 12

UPTON, NY — Prize-winning author Susan Quinn will give a lecture titled "The Clinical Trial: Gold or Oversold?" on Wednesday, June 12, at 4 p.m. in Berkner Hall. The lecture will be based on Quinn's latest book, Human Trials: Scientists, Investors, and Patients in the Quest for a Cure (Perseus Publishing), and the author will be available for book signings after her talk. The lecture is free and open to the public. All visitors to the Laboratory age 15 and over must bring a photo ID to be admitted on site.

Researchers and the Food and Drug Administration have declared clinical trials - trials that test experimental drugs on humans - the "gold standard" of medical research. Yet Susan Quinn's case study of a clinical trial involving new drugs to treat autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus and diabetes, highlights all the imperfections of clinical trials. She will discuss the ways in which personalities and money influence the course of drug trials and the often unclear nature of the results, above all, because of the confounding influence of the placebo effect.

After receiving a B.S. in English from Oberlin College, Susan Quinn became a daily newspaper reporter for The News Herald, outside Cleveland, in 1972. She then moved to Boston, where she became a contributor to an alternative Cambridge weekly, The Real Paper, and later a contributor and staff writer for Boston Magazine. In 1979, she won the Penney-Missouri magazine award for an investigative article in Boston Magazine. She has written articles for many publications, including The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly.

Quinn is the author of On Stage: The Making of a Broadway Play, a book for young adults; A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney, which received the Boston Globe's Lawrence L. Winship Award for the best book published by a New Englander; and Marie Curie: A Life, which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Fawcett Book Prize in England, and is translated into seven languages. Her latest book, Human Trials, was published in May 2002.

For more information on the lecture, call (631) 344-2345. The Laboratory is located on William Floyd Parkway, one-and-a-half miles north of Exit 68 of the LI Expressway.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies. Brookhaven also builds and operates major facilities available to university, industrial, and government scientists. The Laboratory is managed by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited liability company founded by Stony Brook University and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization.