The point is exactly what I said: “doing something”, in this case, is not the same thing as “saving your loved one’s life.”

> Your other option is to do nothing and die

I really don’t want to be this blunt, but I don’t know how to say it any other way: death is not an option. When you’re at the stage of clinical trials for cancer therapies, it is the inevitable outcome. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in the trial. Maybe it extends the inevitable, maybe it doesn’t. The odds lean heavily toward the latter. And there’s also always a cost.

I’ve lost friends and family to cancer too, and watching people you love torture themselves with ineffective (or even minimally effective) treatments is agonizing.

When it comes to clinical trials, you need to start with the cold, hard reality that you’re doing an altruistic experiment with the remaining portion of your life. There are lot of people who don’t understand that, and see trials as some kind of back-door to better treatment.