What are the possible benefits and risks?

What are the main possible benefits of participating in clinical trials?
- Participants have access to a promising treatment which is not available elsewhere
- The new treatment may have a higher efficacy than the standard treatment
- Participants will be watched carefully by health professionals according to a protocol
- The clinical trial is an experiment and its results will be helpful for all. It will either allow other patients to benefit from a new and useful treatment or avoid researchers to continue their research on a useless or harmful treatment. The results will also help researchers to understand cancer better.

What are the main possible risks of participating in clinical trials?
- The new treatment may not have any added value
- The new treatment may have some side-effects that can range from minor and reversible side-effects to life-threatening side-effects. Some side-effects can also appear weeks, months or even years later and include damages to important organs such as heart or kidney or the development of a second cancer
- In phase III clinical trials you usually do not know if you receive the new treatment or not.