Cardiologist bart denys says that if you want to understand why testing new medical treatments can be so discouraging and so expensive these days, just leaf through the proposed clinical trials that pour into his office. Pharmaceutical and medical-device companies seek him out in Thibo-daux, Louisiana, because he's an experienced clinical researcher who works for a private institute with access to more than 30,000 patients. The companies need help from those patients to run trials on everything from experimental heart drugs to better implants-and to win government approval to sell their products. They are willing to pay physicians and subjects to participate. But the process "can be very frustrating," says Denys, who has done clinical studies for more than 20 years and is now director of clinical research for the Cardiovascular Institute of the South, a large private practice.
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