Unexpectedly, over longer time periods T-cell depletion led to less efficient transplantation and high relapse. When this was discovered, the treatment plan was stopped. At the Hutchinson Center we consider all cancer-related deaths to be unnecessary. Certainly, at the Hutchinson Center, as at all centers where clinical trials are conducted, some patients die who might have otherwise lived longer. It is a sad reality that not every trial leads to positive results for all of the participants.
Research concerns itself with unknowns.
Just as we cannot predict with certainty how a patient will respond to an experimental treatment, neither can we know how he or she would have fared without that treatment. Each trial goes through multiple layers of clinical, scientific and ethical review, to assure that the potential benefit of the study more than balances any risk to the patient. But ultimately, the outcome is not certain until the trial has been conducted. When evaluating the risk of participating in a study, one must also consider the risk of not participating. Many patients have died prematurely because they could not or did not participate in trials that could have saved their lives.