Be sure to check out the December 16th edition of the Petrie-Flom Center’s biweekly e-newsletter for the latest on events, affiliate news and scholarship, plus job and fellowship opportunities in health law policy and bioethics!
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Guest Post by Rebecca Dresser
When scientists and doctors get together to talk about accelerating medical advances, someone inevitably brings up the need for more research subjects. Not enough patients are participating in clinical trials, experts complain. If more patients were part of medical studies, we could make more progress in treating disease and improving human lives.
Why do relatively few patients join studies? The National Academy of Sciences and similar groups blame the problem on regulatory impediments and an inadequate supply of physician-researchers willing to ask patients to enroll in trials. They want more funding to support physicians’ research efforts, and they want review committees like IRBs to streamline their work.
But these measures won’t be enough to fix the problem. To really understand why patients don’t enroll in trials, and why many who do enroll drop out early, you have to ask them. I know, because I was one of the patients who turned down a trial.