Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : The therapy of advanced stomach cancer is used to exemplify the clinicians' thoughts when confronted with the decision of adapting a standard treatment for a particular disease. This example shows that the different steps of clinical trials are not chosen on a rational basis and that the concern for rapidity may lead to untimely conclusions which force the clinician to undertake useless therapeutic trials. We conclude that clinical practice in oncology needs to be improved.