What happens when a clinical trial fails? This year, the Food and Drug Administration approved some 40 new medicines to treat human illnesses, including 13 for cancer, three for heart and blood diseases and one for Parkinson’s. We can argue about which of these drugs represent transformative advances (a new medicine for breast cancer, tested on women with relapsed or refractory disease, increased survival by just a few months; a drug for a type of leukemia had a more lasting impact), but we know, roughly, the chain of events that unfolds when a trial is positive.

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