Patients typically prefer to select their own treatment, or have their physician choose it for them. Some physicians believe that randomizing patients is unethical and violates the physician's responsibility to treat patients in the most appropriate manner. They argue that careful comparison of Phase II clinical trial data to historical outcomes under standard therapy is often preferable to performing large randomized trials. Christopher Daugherty, M.D., University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, who has written several articles on the ethics of clinical trials disagrees. Without Phase III trials and the randomization process, we would be lost in a maze of many different ways to treat a patient, with no real objective information about whether one therapy is really superior to another.
Finances also limit patients' ability to participate in clinical trials.
Many insurance and managed care policies do not pay for medical care patients receive on a clinical trial. Some doctors won't even discuss a clinical trial with a patient if they believe the insurance company will not pay for it. If you want to do your own research on clinical trials, there are many resources. The National Cancer Institute has information on more than 1,500 clinical trials. The information, updated monthly, includes eligibility requirements, a description of the study, the names of doctors in charge and hospitals treating patients on the trial.