There are cases where early results from a trial were so promising that both sides (of a double-blind trial) were put on the treatment.
eg:
A new prostate cancer drug trial has been so successful doctors have decided to stop it early.
Medics at London's Royal Marsden Hospital were testing a powerful alpha radiation drug on 461 people while another group of the same number were being treated with a dummy drug.
Patients taking the new drug experienced less pain, side effects and lived longer.
Researchers were so astounded with the results they decided to stop the trial and started treating all 922 patients taking part in the study because they said it would be unethical not to.
Yes, but this has to be built into the experiment, or at least considered in the statistical analysis. You cannot just stop something when it's statistically significant.
You have to be extremely careful about this, otherwise you can end up with much worse significance than simple analysis would suggest (and then that kills people).
Yeah, "Stop when the results are positive" is one of the classic ways to fudge a study. Twelve patients (the number mentioned in the article) is way, way premature to end this early.
In this case, it's not even the regulatory environment. As the article mentions, the treatment is as fantastically expensive as it is fantastic. A lot of the skepticism isn't that it can't work, but that it might be too expensive to be viable.
eg:
A new prostate cancer drug trial has been so successful doctors have decided to stop it early. Medics at London's Royal Marsden Hospital were testing a powerful alpha radiation drug on 461 people while another group of the same number were being treated with a dummy drug. Patients taking the new drug experienced less pain, side effects and lived longer. Researchers were so astounded with the results they decided to stop the trial and started treating all 922 patients taking part in the study because they said it would be unethical not to.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2041301/Prostate-c...