Do we error in avoiding trial?

            BALTIMORE - HealthDay News asked: What if you set up an important cancer clinical trial and nobody came? That scenario could become a reality for oncology researchers across the U.S. , new research shows. Some experts are advocating the small pool of informed, willing participants be rationed to only the most important cancer trials, leaving other studies to languish or close down.

            It's a notion that saddens 38-year-old cancer survivor Rod Quiros, who had a potentially deadly lymphoma when he was 23 but made the decision to enroll in an experimental drug trial. "I don't think I'd be here to tell my story if I hadn’t participated then," he said. "We really can't do enough to stress how important trials are," said Quiros, a business analyst from Suffern , NY . "We may have a wonder drug sitting in a dark freezer somewhere, but if you can't get enough people to participate in the trials and help advance that, we'll never find out if it works."

            Experts say that for the past few decades just 5-10% of all U.S. cancer patients have joined a clinical trial. With the current boom in biotechnology and drug development, the demand for willing, eligible participants far outstrips the supply.

            In a study reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Jennifer Tam-McDevitt and colleagues at the Baltimore-based Geriatric Oncology Consortium tallied up the number of participants needed to complete all 679 active U.S. phase I, II, and III clinical

trials for breast, lung, and prostate cancers. Said Tam-McDevitt, the nearly 238,000 patients needed to fulfill enrollment and complete these studies "would represent more than half of the total 2005 [cancer] incidence." That's a far cry from the less than 10% of cancer patients currently enrolled in U.S. trials, she said.

            "Within certain tumors and certain cancers, we really are running out of patients," warned Tam-McDevitt, director of scientific development at the consortium.

            Why the shortfall? It's certainly not because patients are unwilling to join, said Dr. Robert Comis, president of the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups ( CCCG ), which lobbies to increase patient and doctor participation in trials. His group published its own study at the ASCO meeting and found when informed about a trial by their doctor, 40% of cancer patients either enrolled or tried to enroll. Of those who met eligibility requirements and participated, 96% said they "were treated with dignity and respect" during the trial, and 91% said they'd recommend participation to a family member or friend with cancer.