Ethical questions on randomized controlled clinical trials

RCT, the new paradigm of modern medicine, was developed in the 40-s of this century and is considered to be the most up-to-date experimental method of our time in comparing the efficacy and value of various prophylactic and therapeutic strategies. Its use, however, poses several ethical questions. The most important of them are: Is this form of experimentation ethical at all? Is it ethically justified to continue the RCT to the stage to reach the statistically significant result between the groups? Is it ethical to assign the patients randomly to the various therapeutic strategies? What is the necessary amount and type of information which is due to the patient? The article endeavours to help to answer these questions.