This weekend I am gong to go out to the cineplex and see what has been described as a not-so-great movie called Extraordinary Measures. The story about a businessman (played by Brendan Fraser) who teams with an irascible scientist (apparently overplayed by Harrison Ford)  to develop a drug to cure a disease that fatally affects a small number of children is, according to what I have read so far, notable for insights it provides into the world of clinical trials. The Toronto Daily Star dissed the film but did concede it was a “…movie that actually works better as an instructional video on the perils of the American medical system than it does as straight melodrama. Few films on this topic so clearly illustrate the competing agendas and cut-throat capitalism of America’s for-profit health care.” (For full review click here.)

The film is notable because of how the worlds of commerce and business are so closely coupled with medical research. There is a creeping acknowledgement that research is not pristine, nor purely about the discovery of medical breakthroughs; that it has a commercial side that can be viewed as less than savory. This is similar to how medicine overall  has been increasingly portrayed as a corporate enterprise more than as a life-saving endeavor.  Whether the movie’s views about research and money are wholly accurate is beside the point. It does signal that the clinical trials system is facing an image issue – one that  CROs as an industry and university researchers as a group might want to be aware of as the business of research continues to grow at an impressive rate while other sectors of the economy tank.

For  more reviews of Extraordinary Measures go to Rotten Tomatoes, which links to several reviews and provides a good oversight of the film – which has been compared to a glorified made for TV movie. But hey, those of us interested in trials will certainly get something out of the experience, if only a little more insight into how the general public views our endeavors.