Helen Asks: ‘What are the pros and cons of medical trials?’

All over the internet and newspapers adverts offering large amounts of money for medical research can be found. At first thought it seems simple, take a pill or an injection every so often and get paid thousands of pounds.

However, there is a catch. These drugs have never been tested on humans before and the side effects are not known. There may be a chance that the drugs you are given are placebos but you won’t know until you take them. Testing drugs is like playing Russian roulette with your health, you could be taking a harmless substance or if you’re unlucky a dosage of an untested drug could be fatal. Taking part in medical research means that you will have to put your full trust in scientists who themselves are not sure what the outcome of the experiment will be.

In difficult economic times adverts like the ones pictured above risk attracting people in vulnerable financial situations who may feel that they have no other choice. For some, the large amounts of money offered would be an incentive to volunteer themselves regardless of the risks to their health.

In the most extreme cases initially healthy people have died, become critically ill or had their quality of life drastically reduced as a result of drugs trials.

The infamous ‘elephant man’ TGN1412 drug trials in Northwick Park, London in 2006 where six human guinea-pigs were left critically ill is a bad advert for taking part in medical trials yet people do not seem to be put off. The number of volunteers in the UK is rising and according to the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) around 640,000 people came forward to take part last year.

Some medical trials don’t do testing on healthy participants but experiment on patients who already have terminal or life threatening illness and have no other options left. For them, the trial can either give false hope or provide a ‘miracle’ cure.

Back in 2001, 20 year old British woman Rachel Forber was diagnosed with the variant form of Creutzfeldt -Jacob disease (vCJD), a fatal degenerative illness that rapidly destroys the victim’s nervous system, leaving them completely helpless. After searching the internet for a cure her father discovered Dr Stanley Prusiner an award winning scientist who was willing to test the malaria drug Quinacrine on her. After a few weeks Rachel went from being unable to walk and talk to almost full recovery, everyone believed that she had been cured. However, it soon became clear that the drug was causing her liver to fail so she had to stop taking it. As the drug left her system she went downhill again quickly and soon died.

Not only had this trial given false hope to the Forber family and countless others affected by CJD but it also prolonged the patient’s suffering. However, if the drug had worked it would have meant that thousands of lives could be saved from this horrific illness. If the experiment had never been carried out then no one would have ever found out.

More positive arguments for medical trials include the opportunity to help others and the increase in the government safety regulations since the Northwick Park drugs trials in 2006.

Serious cases aside other smaller and less risky medical trials can help others in a big way. More recently Oxford University has been carrying out trials of a new typhoid vaccine on 150 volunteers with the aim of helping people in poorer countries. One volunteer Gary Bartlett said that he felt happy about helping to find an effective treatment that could help save lives. He also was not put off by contracting mild typhoid fever as a result of being exposed to the disease. Gary’s illness was not life threatening because it was easily treated with anti-biotic drugs.

Going back hundreds of years medical trials have always been carried out, without them we would not have the treatments that we have today. In the past people would have been inevitably harmed in order for medicine to advance. Today safety regulations have improved and extreme cases like Northwick Park are rare. Drugs need to be tested safely on animals before they can ever be considered for human trials so that severe health risks can be minimized as much as possible. However, according to Professor David Webb from the University of Edinburgh no one can ever be 100% certain about any health risks.

Adults should be free to make their own decision as to whether or not they want to take part in medical trials; but scientists need to fully explain the risks first and make them aware of what could happen.