Thinking of enrolling your child in a clinical trial?
Clinical trials are voluntary human research studies designed to answer specific questions about the safety and effectiveness of drugs, vaccines, devices and other therapies–or to study new ways of using existing treatments. By law, giving a study drug to children must provide a potential for clinical benefit that justifies the risk of taking the drug, and the children who participate must have the disease or condition being studied. Under limited circumstances, children may be exposed to the risks of a drug (or other intervention) that does not offer any clinical benefit, provided that the risks are sufficiently low and the information to be gained is important to understanding or improving the disease or condition.
