alt Hacker NewsThe bigger problem with trials is not the danger, so much as the fact that they're unlikely to do anything.
As GP noted, most drugs don't work. To make it a bit more specific, even in phase 3, the failure rate for cancer drugs is something like 50%. And that's typically for some non-survival endpoint (assuming you even get the treatment, which is itself a coin flip).
Clinical trials are noble, admirable things to do, but too many people think of them as treatments, when they really are not. They're an experiment that you do with your body when you reach the end of the road and there are no more options.
It always makes me a little sad to hear how patients talk about trials and fight to get into them, as if being in the trial is somehow progress. Expectations are not being managed properly.
>The bigger problem with trials is not the danger, so much as the fact that they're unlikely to do anything.
And? What is the point of this observation? Of course they are unlikely to do anything. Your other option is to do nothing and die. Nothing wrong with that if that's what people choose to do...'accept their fate' and all that. I'm not opposed to it at all, there's a certain appeal to it.
But when your wife and the mother of your two beautiful daughters is laying helpless on nature's altar you fucking move dude. You don't do nothing.