Is it safe? Who is watching?

You are not alone in there. An ethics committee, called an IRB in the United States, must approve the trial before a single person can join, and it does not work for the research team. A separate monitoring committee watches the results while the trial is still running.

Every problem you have gets written down, even when we think the drug did not cause it. If the treatment is clearly harming people the trial stops, and if it is clearly working the trial can stop early so the results reach everyone sooner.

Written by two physicians. Checked against patient information from the US National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research UK.