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Clinical Trials: A Brave Step For Some Patients

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Sep 5, 2008 6:30 pm US/Eastern

Clinical Trials: A Brave Step For Some Patients

Reporting
Dr. Maria Simbra
(KDKA) Sometimes people hesitate to enter clinical trials because they don't know about them, sometimes because they're afraid, or because they have the wrong idea about what actually happens.

Some people do take that brave step.

For example, Connie Mielich, of Tylersport, Pa., has a rare cancer of the bone. This is her third bout, but her first clinical trial.

"They wanted to see if this drug would improve quality of life, and possibly cure cancer," she says.

Her cancer doctor brought up the possibility. But whether to take part became a family decision. While it could be helpful, the drug might also be harmful.

"You don't know if you're going to have any kind of allergic reaction to the drug, you don't know what in the future you might have," she says about her concerns.

But she and her family decided to go for it...a decision patient advocate Gwen Darien helps people with.

"Currently less than 5 percent of adult patients participate in clinical trials," she says. "A lot of times people go on clinical trials because they believe that is their best hope for surviving their cancer."

But there's no guarantee.

Many studies compare standard care with standard care plus an experimental treatment. Darien finds some people mistakenly think they're missing out if they aren't assigned to the new drug group.

"You get the absolute standard of care," says Darien. "That's what they're comparing it to. So you may not get the experimental drug, but they don't know if the experimental drug is better. They hypothesize it's better."

Clinical trials are to test the hypothesis, something Mielich was happy to help with.

Even though she lost one leg to the disease, she hoped to contribute something of herself that cancer couldn't take, "I always think it's gonna help someone else. They're going to learn something, from what I did."

And she hopes what she did gives the answer others with her kind of cancer have been waiting for.

"I hope this is the one, this is the cure. This is what I pray for every day. Let this be the one. It's important to me."

Mielich is no longer in the trial, because her tumor size is just over the size the criteria would allow.

Darien acknowledges clinical trials aren't for everyone, but she hopes more people ask about them, and consider being in them to advance cancer treatment for others.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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