Why have clinical trials?

Doctors are always looking for new and better ways to treat cancer, and they do this by carrying out cancer research trials (clinical trials).

Clinical trials are the only reliable way of testing new treatments for any disease. They are carried out when early research suggests that a new treatment might be better than the best currently available treatment.

CancerBACUP has a section with more detailed information about clinical trials.

Although taking part in the MS01 trial may not necessarily help you personally, if you take part you will be helping doctors throughout the UK to find the best way of treating mesothelioma, which could be of great benefit to other people with mesothelioma in the future.

How treatments are selected

People taking part in the MS01 trial are randomised to one of three different treatment plans. ‘Randomised’ means selected at random by computer, in this case so that equal numbers of people are picked for each of the three treatment groups, rather than your doctor choosing.

Neither you nor your doctor can choose which group you would be in. This is because it has been shown that if doctors or patients are able to select the treatment each patient receives they can influence the outcome of the research and the trial results become unreliable.

Randomisation is the best way of looking at the advantages and disadvantages of different treatments, as it ensures that each group of patients has the same mix of ages, sex and state of health.

If you feel that you definitely want to have one of the treatment plans or would wish to avoid one of them, you should discuss this with your doctor.

But if you decide that you want to have only a certain treatment you will not be eligible to join the MS01 trial.

You should agree to take part in the trial only if you are completely happy for the treatment plan to be chosen at random.