Clinical trial practitioners can learn valuable lessons from sensationalist media reporting that followed the collapse of a clinical trial in South Africa in 2007, say Gita Ramjee and colleagues in this PLoS Medicine article.Ramjee’s team were principal investigators on a microbicide trial that was stopped when rates of HIV infection in female participants were found to be higher than with placebo (see Safety concerns halt trials of HIV microbicide NW3393ENG). They faced alarmist and inaccurate media reports (for example, that women were “bought to sleep with HIV-positive men”) that raised concern among politicians and communities at other trial sites.
