The Clinical Evaluation of New Drugs [antikvár]

PREFACE This book is written for the many who participate in the search for and evaluation of better and safer drugs to treat human disease. The recent astonishing developments in chemistry and pharmacology as well as in methods of clinical investigation have led to still greater emphasis on the discovery of preparations, testing them in vitro and in animals, and their experimental use in man before making them available to the public. As a result, at this very moment in thousands of hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and doctors' offices, the efficacy of hundreds of new or modified drug preparations is being tested. This tmparalleled situation—inconceivable a generation ago— has meant that the small core of career investigators is being augmented by many full-time and part-time researchers, without whose effort this modem progress would have been impossible. Because more and more scientists, both medical and allied workers, find themselves planning clinical trials, administering new drugs, observing reactions, and evaluating results, dissemination of knowledge of the proper techniques for these activities has become extremely important. No reader has to be reminded of the frequency of honest claims of cures that were subsequently proved false because of experimental error. And how often have many hours and dollars gone into "research," when only later was it discovered that certain variables had not been controlled, thereby nullifying information that unfortimately had already been widely publicized. Interest in the methods and techniques of clinical research is high and, of course, reflects the realization of the numerous pitfalls and problems in hmnan experimentation. This book, then.