Clinical trials compromised by online patient chatter

There is growing fear in the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry that an increasing number of people who participate in clinical trials may indeed compromise research by chatting about treatments, side effects and enrollment tips on Facebook, online forums and blogs, according to The Wall Street Journal.

To what extent this is a problem is unclear. But the paper illustrates the issue with an anecdote involving a woman named Jeri Burtchell. She was enrolled in a trial for an experimental multiple sclerosis drug and convinced she was getting the new medicine, which was not the standard therapy that some patients were randomly assigned to receive.