I think the professionals have got to be very honest with the patient. And in some ways I think perhaps the doctor who was offering to put me onto a clinical trial in the end when the chips were down was just slightly more interested in getting people onto his clinical trial than stopping to think very hard. You know, if this was, this is his patient, is he really making sure that his patient gets the absolute best treatment there is available? I mean, often that won’t be the case with trials. But where it is I think the doctors have to be quite sure that if this was their wife, their daughter, their best friend, are they sure they would say, “Go on the clinical trial.” Or would they say, “Actually I think there’s something else better we could do for you than the risk of being randomly assigned to no treatment or perhaps not the best treatment that we know.”

I think it’s very difficult, because I think probably all doctors doing clinical trials have high hopes of the treatment that they’re testing out is going to prove to be some kind of breakthrough, is going to be useful and valuable for their patients.

 

So part of them must be saying, “I think my patients will do well out of this.” When you ask, when I asked my doctor, it was, “Well, I may think that, but I don’t know it. I can say I’ve got a hunch, but should I really be prescribing on a hunch?” And I said in the end, “Well, yes, actually. Because I come to you, my doctor, for your best hunch. There are going to be, may be lots of things that doctors don’t altogether know. But from your long experience, I would like the benefit of what you on the balance of what you kind of feel, even if you can’t prove it, is going to do me best, most good.” And I think that is a tricky dilemma for doctors with these clinical trials.