The Clinical Trials Guru

Today’s video is an answer to a question that someone asked me online regarding clinical trials and study participants being randomly assigned to either a study drug or a placebo (sugar pill). Here is the question in it’s entirety:
“How can I be assured that I get a ‘fair’ chance of getting the experimental drug (as opposed to the placebo), when there exists a real possibility that clinical testers are pulling strings to make sure that their friends/relatives are in the experimental treatment group?”
The answer, as you will see in my video response is pretty simple actually. Researchers are not allowed to enroll family or friends into their clinical trials. Furthermore, even if they do enroll their family or friends, the study doctors or study staff have no control over who will receive the study drug or the placebo in the clinical trial, and actually, they may not even know what treatment group the study participant has been assigned. This is called “blinding” of the study doctor, so as to not influence his analysis of the study participant’s progress in the clinical trial. Thanks for these excellent questions! Keep ‘em coming!