A pharmaceuticals manufacturer is testing a drug developed to treat cancer. During the final stages of development, the drug’s effectiveness is being tested on individuals for different (1) dosage conditions and (2) age groups. One of the problems is patient mortality during the experimentation. Justify your design recommendations through a comparison of alternatives and in terms of external and internal validity.
a) Recommend the appropriate design for the experiment.
b) Explain the use of control groups, blinds, and double-blind studies.