 Conventional cancer treatment protocols are largely ineffective, which is why many doctors end up prescribing experimental drugs to their most severely diseased patients to see if they provide any benefits. But a new study out of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, has found that most of the time, experimental treatments do nothing to help patients. And worse, they typically cause other serious and life-threatening side effects. Published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology , the new report is based on data from 172 trials published over the course of two years. After a thorough data analysis, researchers discovered that less than one third of experimental drugs show any visible signs of improving patient health, and less than 50 percent have any positive effects on any other condition. Meanwhile, two thirds or more of experimental drugs cause severe or life-threatening side effects. 'People need to realize that because the trials have not been completed there is a great deal that is not known about the treatments,' explained Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society (ACS) to Reuters Health. 'There are people who get these treatments and get hurt.' And if those statistics are not bad enough, researchers say actual statistics are likely far worse. Most of the time, negative study results are withheld from journal publications, which skews the real life results. So in the end, the effectiveness of experimental drugs is poor at best, and purely detrimental at worst. selfnews recently covered several stories about the illegitimacy of many drug trials. Back in August, it was revealed that drug company-funded clinical trials -- which are often the ones that end up in prestigious journals -- almost always yield good results ( http://www.selfnews.com/029394_clinical_t... ). Drug companies routinely tamper with trial results to make a drug look more effective than it actually is ( http://www.selfnews.com/030107_drug_compa... ), deceiving both the medical community and the public. Sources for this story include: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69P4ZH... 