Sir, - May I thank Dr D. M. Humphreys for his lengthy and considered response in your pages (August 8th) to my letter about heart patients and clinical trials. I am very pleased he accepts the point I made, that some sort of prior notification of the likelihood of such trials would be desirable.
One thing in his letter does puzzle me. He writes: "many Irish patients have participated in clinical trials of new treatments following heart attack and especially the kind of treatment that was being offered to Mr Arden." Many? The Patient's Information Sheet I was handed in Galway hospital states that "TNK-tPA has only been studied in 113 patients . . ." The 113, I take it, being drawn from all over Europe. How many of them were in fact Irish? It was partly because 113 seemed so small a number that I decided not to take part in the trials. -Yours, etc.,
John Arden,
Corrandulla, Co Galway.