Equipoise:
Equipoise is a state of genuine uncertainty on the part of the clinical investigator regarding the comparative therapeutic merits of each arm of a clinical trial, and a necessary component of all clinical research involving human subjects. It follows that at the outset of clinical or surgical research there should be equipoise between each arm of trial. If one treatment arm is known or expected to be substandard or less effective therapeutically, equipoise does not exist, and the protocol should be altered to exclude the inferior treatment.
This also implies that if equipoise is disturbed during the course of a clinical trial -- that is, one treatment is discovered to be better than others or, another is found to be unsafe-- it may be necessary for the researcher to terminate the experiment and offer the superior treatment to all of the subjects.
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