Clinical trials are essential in order to find out whether a new treatment (or a new way of using an existing treatment) can improve the outlook for cancer patients. Only by comparing the new treatment with the best of the treatments already available will doctors know if it offers any benefit.
If studies suggest that a new treatment is as good possibly better than the best current treatment, then clinical trials will set up to compare them.
Once the trials are underway suitable patients will be offered the chance to participate (this is always voluntary, nobody can ever be forced into a trial without their consent).
Anyone wanting to take part in a clinical trial will be given full details about the different types of treatment being tested. However, the decision about which treatment they receive is not up to them.
This is because it is very important that neither the preferences of patients, nor the feelings of their doctors, influence the selection of treatment. If they did then this could bias the results of the trial and give a false comparison of the different treatments. So they clinical trial will only be a true comparison if the choice of treatment is truly random, free from any influence from patients or their doctors.
For this reason the selection of treatment for anyone volunteering for a trial is usually decided by the Trial Centre, which manages the running of the trial. If you agree to take part then your doctor will 'phone the Trial Centre and they will allocate your treatment. This choice is usually based on numbers produced by a computer, which will ensure that enough patients receive each of the treatments to guarantee a true comparison.
When the choice of treatment is done independently from the patient and their doctor it is known as a 'random' choice. So the treatment is decided by random selection and this type of trial is known as a randomised clinical trial.
There is almost universal agreement among doctors and scientists that randomised clinical trials are the best way of deciding if a new treatment really does have anything to offer. So you can be reassured that although it may seem rather strange, leaving your choice treatment to a computer is, in this situation, the best way of making that decision.