Among the many draft executive orders floating around the White House, one stands out as likely to win cheers across the political spectrum: a “Right To Try” order to let terminally ill people take medications that the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t yet OK’d.
President Trump was quite clear on the thinking last week: “One thing that’s always disturbed me: They come up with a new drug for a patient who’s terminal, and the FDA says we can’t . . . approve the drug, because we don’t want to hurt the patient. But the patient is not going to live more than four weeks.”
In other words, if you’re facing death, you should have the right to gamble your remaining days on a new treatment, whatever the bureaucrats say.
Right To Try, as it’s called, is just common sense. And if an executive order isn’t enough to make it happen, Congress should get on board, too.
The FDA’s rules for OK’ing new drugs have grown ever more onerous for decades. It took the AIDS crisis — and the militant activism of groups like ACT UP — to force it to unbend in the least and OK any kind of experimental treatment.
So for decades, the FDA has had a “compassionate use” program that in theory grants Right To Try — but in fact makes you jump through far too many hoops when time is tight.
The FDA points out that it grants nearly all “compassionate use” requests — without admitting that the process surely deters many from even trying. As the Goldwater Institute (a longtime Right To Try backer) notes, the natural demand for such treatment is surely higher than the thousand or so people who work their way through FDA rules each year.
Not that all treatments are even that unlikely to work: The FDA is often slower than other First World agencies to OK new treatments.
“If a drug is approved in another developed country, like the UK or Japan, it should be available to Americans,” notes Goldwater’s Starlee Coleman. “There are countless examples of drugs that are available and saving lives in Europe, but stuck in the FDA pipeline.”
Why should a dying person need any government approval?
Please, Mr. President: Get it done.
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