Life promises and 'failed' family ties: expectations and disappointment within a clinical trial (Ivory Coast)

Building on fieldwork carried out in a clinical trial looking at early antiretroviral treatment for HIV in Abidjan, this paper aims to analyse the way relations emerge during trials and the consequences of the end of participation. Instead of discussing it using the register of ethics, understood as a universal set of principles, the trial is analysed for what it means locally for its actors, mainly patients. From this standpoint, the trial can be defined as both a promise of life and of new possibilities embodied in what is often described as new family ties. How are such ties formed and what does it mean when these ties are broken at the end of patient participation? Discussing the failure of family ties commented upon by patients and dealt by physician researcher is a way to look at ethics from below.