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Arch Intern Med. 2001;161:768-769.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In the last decade the number of clinical trials involving thousands of patients has greatly increased.¹ This fact implies an enthusiastic participation in the advancement of medical science by both the patients and their physicians. Fund-for-science and/or love-for-science motivations could easily explain physicians' adhesion to this practice,² but there is no sure explanation why patients agree to participate in medical trials.³ To explore this question, 4 family physicians gave their first consecutive 250 patients a thorough explanation and a simple questionnaire (Figure 1) to be anonymously returned. Each family physician was living in a northern Italian town of about 150 000 inhabitants and had been assigned approximately 1000 patients by the Italian National Health Service.

Figure appears in full text version. Number of responses (in bold) to the informed consent questionnaire. Percentages indicate the part of the population who returned the questionnaires (289/1000).

We gathered 289 responses to the questionnaires (women, 57.4%; men, 42.6%). The ² . . . [Full Text of this Article]