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Watchdog Group Warns Of "Reckless" Clinical Trial At North Carolina Hospitals

A national consumer watchdog group wants hospitals to end a clinical trial being conducted on sepsis patients. This could impact health care systems in North Carolina's Triad and Triangle areas.

The clinical trial is called CLOVERS, and it began enrolling patients in June. It's aimed at better understanding sepsis, a bacterial infection that is a leading cause of death in U.S hospitals.

The News and Observer reports that the group Public Citizen sent a letter to federal regulators calling the trial unethical and reckless. The Washington, D.C.-based group says the trial lacks basic patient safeguards, and could expose up to 2,320 participants to organ failure and death.

The CLOVERS program is currently underway at Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, and is also being used at the Duke University Medical Center and UNC Chapel Hill. All three health care systems have declined to comment on the letter or the allegations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing the claims made by Public Citizen. 

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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