RebYidd, obviously the controls are not to find out what untreated cancer does, but to find out what the proposed drug does. The control is essential to determine if any response can be explained to statistical variability, placebo effect, or a real biological effect. Without it, you have no idea if the drug worked.
That said, it would be unethical to deny the standard treatment to someone participating in a trial as a control. For that reason, it is standard in many trials testing a new drug that the control is the standard treatment, and the experiment is to see how the new drug compares to the standard alone or in combination with the standard treatment- can it cure/improve/change the outcome better than the accepted protocol?
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