But we're talking about people who have been told "this disease is going to kill you." If a treatment causes even 5 percent of them to be cured, how is that not significant? What if 40 percent have tumors shrink? Remember, any reversal of the disease is a good thing. If you're just measuring a statistical increase in life span (say 3 years treated vs 1 year placebo), I'd say you're not really aiming high enough. If you've got something with real promise you'd know it without a control group. The person in this article is exactly such a case.
It's more that the controlled placebo group will also be controlled for other medications that could compromise the research. If I have cancer A and I'm taking three or four medications + an experimental medication then it's difficult to know which factor affects the results. So the control group will be on the same types of medication in a proper study where as a sort of ad-hoc grouping of patients would be less easy if not impossible to accurately report.
I assumed we'd be comparing to the predicted outcome from no treatment, but I suppose if you wait until Hospice time there's not going to be much success with even the best virus compared to doing nothing. Which raises other questions about just how long and at what cost we try to delay the inevitable.
