Britain | Trials and errors

Clinical trials are ailing

Britain invented clinical trials. Now it wants to reinvent them

Helping the medicine go down

IN MAY 1941 Archie Cochrane was captured by the Germans. Clever, curious and bored, the young doctor passed the time in his Greek prisoner-of-war camp treating his fellow inmates—and conducting trials on them. In one, he measured the effects of yeast consumption on beriberi (it worked splendidly). In another, he tried international relations: did Yugoslav prisoners like British ones more or less after meeting them? (The results “were depressing”.) But one question obsessed him: did his medical treatments work? Too often, he wrote, “I had no idea whether I was doing more harm than good.”

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Trials and errors”

Where will he stop?

From the February 26th 2022 edition

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