Promoting clinical trials
When working on this website and finding out as much as possible about clinical trials and what they are used for - and who needs to use them - I’ve discovered just how hard it is to promote the idea that they are necessary, important and ultimately life-saving.
Forget about the money and the advertising. By taking part in a clinical trial you are helping to advance medical science, even slightly, and by taking that to it’s conclusion you are advancing human knowledge.
No one argues that giving blood is anything but noble and “the right thing to do” but there are places you get paid for doing that. Anything to encourage people to potentially save someone’s life!
Interestingly I found an article from 2005 (a bit old, I know) that speaks of a Professor from Manchester claiming that not only clinical trials important, they should also be every person’s duty:
TAKING part in scientific research should be compulsory, a Manchester professor has claimed.
Leading ethics expert John Harris wants scientific research to become a public duty as important as putting on your seatbelt, getting your child vaccinated or doing jury service.
The professor of bioethics at Manchester University’s Institute of Medical Ethics says everyone should be morally obliged to support or take part in medical studies.
