These sorts of observations are great, and I feel like I always learn a lot from your posts like this. I've read about how the "drug pipeline" works before, but this was more clear and super easy to understand.
Unfortunately, yes I’ve known at least two patients who have been told that they can no longer participate in a clinical trial because their numbers drop out of a target range. Essentially they get no more access to the tested drug. It is considered a failure withi the study and it’s for the safety of the patient, but it should be phrased more from the perspective of the patient’s success than the perspective of the trial’s success.
Oh yeah, definitely! It's all in the phrasing in this case, and they're very much helping to advance the trial no matter what the results end up being. Strange the researchers aren't more attuned and sensitive to this.
Unfortunately, many medical folks start to view patients as “cases” instead of humans. I understand it due to case load, managing one’s sanity because the stats can be depressing, and how reliant medicine has become on tech and such but still...
There is a movement in medicine to widen the scope of what’s looked at and change how information is gleaned but like all things it’s a process marrying a human empathic touch with scientific advances. I have a lot of thoughts that I’ll probably write about soon but I feel it boils down to analyzing data incompletely and incorrectly.
I look forward to seeing your post elaborating on this. I can sort of see both sides of the picture here, but I can't imagine it being a good feeling to be on the receiving end of being referred to as a "case."
These sorts of observations are great, and I feel like I always learn a lot from your posts like this. I've read about how the "drug pipeline" works before, but this was more clear and super easy to understand.
Man, people actually say "patients have failed a trial"?! That's all kinds of messed up.
Thanks for sharing the background here. I had a vague idea of the multiple phases but this was much more specific.
Unfortunately, yes I’ve known at least two patients who have been told that they can no longer participate in a clinical trial because their numbers drop out of a target range. Essentially they get no more access to the tested drug. It is considered a failure withi the study and it’s for the safety of the patient, but it should be phrased more from the perspective of the patient’s success than the perspective of the trial’s success.
Oh yeah, definitely! It's all in the phrasing in this case, and they're very much helping to advance the trial no matter what the results end up being. Strange the researchers aren't more attuned and sensitive to this.
Unfortunately, many medical folks start to view patients as “cases” instead of humans. I understand it due to case load, managing one’s sanity because the stats can be depressing, and how reliant medicine has become on tech and such but still...
There is a movement in medicine to widen the scope of what’s looked at and change how information is gleaned but like all things it’s a process marrying a human empathic touch with scientific advances. I have a lot of thoughts that I’ll probably write about soon but I feel it boils down to analyzing data incompletely and incorrectly.
I look forward to seeing your post elaborating on this. I can sort of see both sides of the picture here, but I can't imagine it being a good feeling to be on the receiving end of being referred to as a "case."
I am an oncology nurse and I have to tell you, this was so informative -with your brand of Rudy-ness ;)
Thank you! As an amateur/citizen-scientist, I was worried about messing up the technical stuff too much.