The Toronto Star has good medical reporters, but none of them wrote the front-page story in Saturday’s paper that showed an almost-total lack of understanding of clinical trials.

I know better than to judge an entire story by a headline — or in the case, a cutline (commonly known as a caption) on a Page One picture. I hoped this cutline (newspaper-speak for the text below a photo; a “caption” is the photo’s “headline”) was just meant to draw me into the paper, where the full story actually appeared on page A18:

“Adrienne Lotton, a 34-year-old veterinarian, was accepted into a drug trial to treat her advanced melanoma. But she landed in the control group of patients, who didn’t get the drug. Should a life potentially hinge on a random selection?” Continue reading →