What a Clinical Trial Is A clinical trial is a study of a new drug or procedure that has not yet been approved for use. These studies use human volunteers. You should always check with your doctor before volunteering for a clinical trial.
Volunteers usually get lots of medical attention in the form of thorough lab tests.
After the trial, volunteers often get a free supply of the drug for an extended period of time. You have the satisfaction of knowing you've helped find new ways of fighting HIV or its opportunistic infections. Finding out about adverse reactions is one of the reasons for having a clinical trial, but it's the early volunteers who suffer. Some trial medications aren't effective in humans. With HIV that's dangerous because if the virus mutates around one drug, it often makes other treatments useless.