On Mon, 20 Sep 2010, Bert Gunter wrote:
Hi Folks:
**Off Topic**
Those interested in clinical trials may find the following of interest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/health/research/19trial.html
It concerns the ethicality of randomizing those with life-threatening
disease to relatively ineffective SOC when new "biologically targeted"
therapies "appear" to be more effective. While the context may be new,
the debate, itself, is not: Tukey wrote (or maybe it was talked -- I
can't remember for sure) about this about 30 years ago. I'm sure many
other also have done so.
Anscombe's remarkable (and influential) review of Armitage's 'Sequential
Medical Trials' back in 1963
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2283272
is worth a look by any statistician who is interested in this topic.
It makes explicit several factors that weigh in the ethical assessment of
a particular trial design.
He discusses in formal terms the weighing of outcomes for patients
in the trial at hand aginst those of future patients and the impact that
this might have on design decisions.
HTH,
Chuck
Cheers,
Bert
--
Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics
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Charles C. Berry (858) 534-2098
Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine
E mailto:cbe...@tajo.ucsd.edu UC San Diego
http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/ La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901
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