To Protect Those Who Serve

Any clinical investigator will tell you that the success of a clinical trial is limited by the ability to recruit patients to become research subjects. Altruism aside, many patients who make this transition reach a conscious and informed decision to forgo standard care or even forgo treatment altogether for the chance, but only a chance, that they may benefit from an as yet unproved drug, device, or procedure. The decision takes special courage, and medical science is grateful to the people who display this courage.The investigational treatment received under a research protocol may be no better than the standard . . .