A gripping look at the human drama behind the clinical trials designed to test new drugs and treatments recounts the stories of three volunteers suffering from life-threatening illnesses, including a teenager facing the loss of her leg from cancer. Clinical trials are designed to evaluate new drugs or treatments, with human research the last step before final approval for large-scale use. For those with life-threatening illnesses, clinical trials may represent their last chance. Following three patients whose lives depend on the success of experimental therapies, science journalist Kelly draws us into their realm of frustrating failures and hopeful breakthroughs. AIDS, breast cancer, and osteosarcoma (bone cancer) affect millions, and the patients Kelly writes about are on the front lines in the daily research battles. He spends a year in the life of each patient, from initial diagnosis and failed treatments to the complicated maze of admission requirements to qualify for, and remain in, a trial group. This moving book sheds light on the process and the individuals?doctors as well as patients?who are "everyday heroes." Recommended for popular health collections.?Anne C. Tomlin, Auburn Memorial Hosp. Lib., NY Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. The human side of research medicine is the focus of this account of three patients participating in clinical trials of new drugs for the treatment of AIDS and cancer. In 1995 and 1996 science writer Kelly (co-author with Thomas Verny of The Secret Life of the Unborn Child, not reviewed) spent some 200 hours with Edward Sandisfield, Romy Hochman, and Julie Conte as they faced life-threatening diseases. Sandisfield, a middle-age gay man knowledgeable about AIDS and its treatment, was so desperate to win a place in the clinical trial at Bellevue of a new protease inhibitor, indivir, in combination with AZT and 3TC, that he was prepared to lie his way into the program if necessary. The Hochmans put their 14-year-old daughter with osteosarcoma (a form of bone cancer that frequently metastasizes to the lungs) into a clinical trial at NYU Medical Center to boost her chances of survival; however, Romy was randomized into the control group, receiving only standard treatment. Conte, a 34-year-old woman with breast cancer, was leery of joining a clinical trial testing a high-dose combination-drug therapy, but having already lost her mother and one sister to the disease, she entered the program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Pennsylvania. Kelly stayed with his three subjects during exams, interviews, and treatment, observing them and talking to them about their experiences, their hopes, and their fears, and interviewing their families, friends, and doctors. Some conversations seem to be reported verbatim, at t imes giving the stories an up-close and personal feel. In each, Kelly inserts an essay on the disease and the treatment being tested. While the stories end with all three patients alive, an afterword reveals that by 1997 one had succumbed. Kellys discussi on of the medicine is thorough, but the portraits of his subjects are uneven. Sandisfield's story is the most complete and his character and his world the best delineated; by comparison, Conte's story seems sketchy, and the teenager Hochman remains opaque . -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. A clear-eyed look at some of the possible risks and rewards [of clinical trials]...The treatments that Edward, Romy, and Julie receive bring moments when reprieve seems certain, followed by moments when, suddenly, everything goes wrong. The therapies also produce an army of painful side effects. And in the end, they have varying degrees of efficacy. +There is a lesson to be drawn from these three stories,+ Kelly writes. +The lesson is about the working of grace and good fortune in life, whether they occur randomly, they are distributed on the basis of worthiness, or...we make our own good fortune, our own miracles.+ Rather than answering these questions himself, Kelly leaves them to the reader. Instead he chooses to write of the unique forms that grace and good fortune take in the lives of each of his subjects, regardless of the success of the treatments they receive. -- New Age Journal, Jan/Feb issue Thousands offer their bodies on the altar of medical progress every year, gambling on protease inhibitors, new cancer drugs, higher doses, different combinations. In this rigorously intelligent book, Kelly follows three clinical-trial patients: Edward, a gay man enrolled in an early trial for indinavir (Crixivan); Romy, 14, and her peach-size knee tumor; Julie, whose mother and older sister diagnosed her breast cancer from beyond the gave. But this is no hagiography of the victim. Kelly gives equal time to the histories of each medicine, the doctors pioneering treatments, and the convoluted bureaucracies administering them. The result is a book of great scope and precise, often painful, emotional