Cure rates for children in the early 1970's were one or two out of ten. Today, cure rates are seven out of ten. According to Dr. Anna Meadows, former Director of the National Cancer Institute's Office of Cancer Survivorship, results of these clinical trials also revealed how to distinguish between patients who require more aggressive treatment and those who require less aggressive treatment, with fewer side effects. These advances were made because thousands of women participated in those trials over the years, giving many of you the benefit of these new treatment options. Not at all.
Clinical trials provide the best treatment available.
According to Dr. Larry Norton of Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, people who participate in clinical trials do better than the those that don't. In fact, participating in a clinical trial is one of the best ways to guarantee good care. A new treatment being tested has shown some promise of being better than the best treatment currently available. The reason that a clinical trial has been initiated is that the superiority of one treatment over the other has not yet been firmly established. The clinical trial is designed to compare directly the new treatment to the best available treatment, under very strict scientific guidelines, by treating a large number of patients with either the standard therapy or the new therapy.