title: Why clinical translation cannot succeed without failure.
abstract: The high rates of attrition that occur in drug development are widely regarded as problematic, but the failure of well-designed studies benefits both researchers and healthcare systems by, for example, generating evidence about disease theories and demonstrating the limits of proven drugs. A wider recognition of these benefits will help the biomedical research enterprise to take full advantage of all the information generated during the drug development process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy and Center for Ethics and Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, United States.
authors.forename: Alex John
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: London
authors.affiliation: Studies of Translation, Ethics and Medicine Research Group, Biomedical Ethics Unit, McGill University, Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kimmelman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000379:methods*; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D057170:Translational Research, Biomedical / Q000379:methods*; D017211:Treatment Failure
keywords: clinical trials; drug development; ethics; human biology; medicine; preclinical research; reproducibility; translational research