NIH announced Jan. 29 that “Basic Experimental Studies Involving Humans,” also called BESH, will no longer be considered clinical trials and will therefore no longer be subject to the requirements under the NIH definition of a clinical trial, including registration and reporting requirements in ClinicalTrials.gov.
At a lecture at Yale Cancer Center recently, Robert A. Winn brandished a copy of a 32-year old booklet titled “Cancer at a Crossroads: A Report to Congress for the Nation,” using it as a show-and-tell prop in arguing that America’s cancer program is once again at a crossroads and therefore in urgent need of strategic thinking (The Cancer Letter, April 10, 2026).
