Do some patients who enroll in cancer trials receive a placebo instead of the drug?
Cancer trials rarely use placebos (a dummy treatment containing no drug). In trials that compare the experimental treatment to the best standard treatment, patients are usually “randomized” (chosen at random) to one of two different groups: the “treatment group,” which is given the experimental treatment, and the “control group,” which is given the standard treatment. In this situation, the patient gets assigned to one group or the other and may or may not receive the experimental therapy.
