The notorious Queen vs Dudley and Stephens case highlights the persistent potential conflict between safeguarding individual rights and serving the collective good, a dilemma that also arises in clinical research. Doctors face the challenge of providing the best possible care for each patient while contributing to medical progress through randomized clinical trials. A key concept is equipoise: Fried emphasized personal uncertainty, whereas Freedman proposed clinical equipoise, grounded in professional disagreement among experts. In neurosurgery, strong personal preferences, time-sensitive decisions, and limited evidence deepen these challenges, often reducing trial participation. The clinical judgment principle offers a potential solution by combining community-based and individual perspectives, allowing patient enrollment when both treatments are considered medically reasonable. This balanced approach supports ethical neurosurgical trials while promoting scientific advancement and protecting patient interests.
Singh et al. (Mon,) studied this question.