1. Once you sign, the informed consent document requires you to stay in the study until it ends.

2. In clinical trials, researchers always decide who gets what treatments.

3. Clinical trials test the safety and effectiveness of new medicines and other medical products.

4. An Institutional Review Board is a panel of medical experts who decides whether a clinical trial deserves funding from the federal government.

5. Researchers must decide how many people they will enroll in a clinical trial before the trial starts.

6. Sponsors of clinical trials must pay for all injuries that you receive during a study.

7. Pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and even individual investigators can sponsor clinical trials.

8. Both healthy and sick people can participate in clinical trials.

9. You need to provide informed consent only for clinical trials that last more than seven days.

Published December 2002.

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