Comment by timr
4 days ago
The point is exactly what I said: “doing something”, in this case, is not the same thing as “saving your loved one’s life.”
> Your other option is to do nothing and die
I really don’t want to be this blunt, but I don’t know how to say it any other way: death is not an option. When you’re at the stage of clinical trials for cancer therapies, it is the inevitable outcome. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in the trial. Maybe it extends the inevitable, maybe it doesn’t. The odds lean heavily toward the latter. And there’s also always a cost.
I’ve lost friends and family to cancer too, and watching people you love torture themselves with ineffective (or even minimally effective) treatments is agonizing.
When it comes to clinical trials, you need to start with the cold, hard reality that you’re doing an altruistic experiment with the remaining portion of your life. There are lot of people who don’t understand that, and see trials as some kind of back-door to better treatment.
Not that long ago I went to see an acquaintance during his last time on this Earth - bladder cancer. His final time would come the next afternoon, so he was already well into the 'he can hear you but can't speak' phase. At first I felt absolutely awful for him and in general. But then thinking about it more I realized that there's nothing to really feel particularly bad about.
In not that long I'll be the one laying there in that bed, and so will everybody else that was in that room, and even on this Earth. It's just a natural part of life. He, at least, had the privilege of being able to prepare for his final moments, and getting to spend it surrounded by friends and loved ones. It's the final scene that we all will go through, one way or the other. And you know, that's about as ideal a closing act as one could hope for.
I agree. And people who have been through it frequently (e.g. doctors) have a completely different reaction to those who are going through it for the first time. But still, it's understandably a sensitive subject, and even the person most inured to death reacts differently when it's their own family (or themselves) who is dealing with it.
That said, the folks who are recruiting for clinical trials are often playing on this emotional reaction, and over-promising what can be accomplished, or simply not correcting the misperceptions of the people they are recruiting.
It's hard to recruit people into trials when you tell them with absolute clarity that there's very little chance it will benefit them personally.