HPHWD

Immediately after the data were presented, statistician Susan Halabi from Duke University took the stage to discuss the study – a job she’d been given by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which runs the conference. She raised real concerns about how confident doctors could be about Zytiga’s benefit. The Zytiga clinical trial had been stopped too early, she said, and that meant that right now it might be giving an impression that the drug is more effective than it actually is. It would also make it difficult to prove Zytiga extended these men’s lives once and for all. In an interview, she said that the decision to give placebo patients the drug “sacrificed” the trial. “This decision,” she said, “is irreversible.