Yesterday, as part of its "Forty Years' War" series on the fight against cancer, the New York Times tackled the problem of clinical trials. Nobody's participating in them, it seems:
There are more than 6,500 cancer clinical trials seeking adult patients, according to clinicaltrials.gov, a trials registry. But many will be abandoned along the way. More than one trial in five sponsored by the National Cancer Institute failed to enroll a single subject, and only half reached the minimum needed for a meaningful result, Dr. [Scott] Ramsey and his colleague John Scoggins reported in a recent review in The Oncologist.
The article goes on to outline the reasons for the dismal numbers and explores one possible solution. It's an eye-opening piece.
Photo of macrophages attacking a cancer cell by Raowf Guirguis, MD, and Susan Arnold, National Cancer Institute
