Irish survey shows 75% of people would take part in clinical trials if ill

In Ireland, almost half of people believe cancer is the illness science has the greatest potential to cure, according to a survey carried out to launch BioPharma Ambition, an industry-led event that will be held in Dublin in March to showcase the future for medicines innovation.

In the survey, posted on the website of the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA), which sampled 1,000 adults across Ireland, heart disease was cited as the second most likely disease that could be cured by science, followed by dementia and cystic fibrosis.

The survey found that three out of four people would take part in a clinical trial if they were ill. Clinical trials, which are used to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a medicine, give patients access to sometimes life-saving care. In Ireland, 126 clinical studies are under way, compared with 322 for Denmark and 687 for Belgium, according to clinicaltrials.gov, a database of over 300,000 clinical studies conducted in more than 200 countries around the world. The database is provided by the US National Library of Medicines.