All parties may benefit from ethics support services, a rarity in German primary care so far. Furthermore, nurses' self-confidence towards GPs, demanding patients and family members has to be strengthened. Informal caregivers, the most vulnerable group, need more attendance and tailored support.

'Individualized medicine' is an emerging paradigm in clinical life science research. We conducted a socioempirical interview study in a leading German clinical research group, aiming at implementing 'individualized medicine' of colorectal cancer. The goal was to investigate moral and social issues related to physician-patient interaction and clinical care, and to identify the points raised, supported and rejected by the physicians and researchers. Up to now there has been only limited insight into how experts dedicated to individualized medicine view its problems. Interviews with researchers and clinicians (n ¼ 19) were based on a prestructured questionnaire. The content analysis revealed a broad spectrum of opinions. Major findings were (a) disappointments with the limits of the current therapy regimen and clinical practice; (b) problematic impacts on physician-patient relationship; and (c) an informed consent procedure which is mainly based on paternalistic assumptions. According to our analysis, major problems will be uncertainties related to the biomarker's sensitivity and specificity, and the identification of 'nonresponders'. However, the findings also indicate that experts expect evidence-based medicine to replace decisions based on gut feeling or hierarchical structures. Arndt Heßling is a final-year medical student at the University Medical Center Goettingen. His doctoral thesis is about the exploration of physicians' and researchers' understanding of the implications of individualized prognostics and diagnostics of locally advanced colorectal cancer on medical ethics.

Therapeutic misconception is a well-known challenge for informed decision-making for cancer research participants. What is still missing, is a detailed understanding of the impact of "personalised" treatment research (e.g. biomarkers for stratification) on research participants. For this, we conducted the first longitudinal empirical-ethical study based on semi-structured interviews with colorectal cancer patients (n = 40) enrolled in a biomarker trial for (neo)adjuvant treatment, analysing the patients' understanding of and perspectives on research and treatment with qualitative methods. In addition to therapeutic misconception based on patients' confusion of research and treatment, and here triggered by misled motivation, information paternalism or incomprehension, we identified genetic misconception and genetic responsibility as new problematic issues. Patients mainly were not aware of the major research aim of future stratification into responders and non-responders nor did they fully acknowledge this as the aim for personalised cancer research. Thus, ethical and practical reflection on informed decision-making in cancer treatment and research should take into account the complexity of lay interpretations of modern personalised medicine. Instead of very formalistic, liability-oriented informed consent procedures, we suggest a more personalised communication approach to inform and motivate patients for cancer research.