Role Play – A Tale of Two Cousins  

This role play enlightened about how sensitive clinical trials are, and focused on the real life story of two cousins (Brandon and Thomas) in lethal stages of melanoma. A tale of two cousins came into the media’s light due to the fact that were two drugs with different routes of administration that were used to treat melanoma, clinical trials were conducted to demonstrate the efficacy of drug PLX-4032 (wonder drug) in comparison to I.V Dacarbazine, a drug that already existed in the market and showed extremely poor results. In addition, the two cousins Brandon and Thomas were recruited into phase 3 of these trials, which were controlled and randomized, where it claimed the life of one of the cousins. The control arm (Brandon) was given I.V. Dacarbazine and the treatment arm (Thomas) was given PLX-4032 which was found to be effective in shrinking tumor sizes. The control arm faced death (Brandon) due to the ineffectiveness of the medicine. People concerned with the trial should be prudent and careful when designing the clinical trials. This created an uproar of ethical issues which involved the negligence of subjects when their quality of life should have been focused on.