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A Win for Liberty
Add another check mark in the column of Good Trump! Today President Trump signed the Right to Try Act of 2017 expanding access to unapproved and experimental, but potentially life-saving medications for terminally ill patients.
Upon signing the bill POTUS issued the following statement:
People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure — I want to give them a chance right here at home.
Well said, sir, and kudos on striking a blow for liberty.
Published in Healthcare
Tom, my issue with the “there are clinical trials” argument is that it selectively benefits those patients who are able to pull strings, who know the right people, etc.
I want people to be free to make their own choices, taking the risks in their own hands. To that end, any bill that expands individual freedom (and responsibility) is a huge net positive.
I am thrilled that Trump has signed this bill. I’d like to see him keep going: the FDA should have an advisory role not as a gatekeeper. People should be free to choose, and take responsibility for their own choices.
If I was suffering from something and desperately wanted to try a cutting-edge drug as soon as humanly possible…. this kind of freedom is, for me, merely common-sensical.
I listed clinical trials as one among the options that predated this bill. Another — and far more apropos — is the Expanded Access Program. Though the number of approvals under this program is small (~1800 a year), these include applications both for individuals and for small populations (i.e., for groups of people with similar conditions).
The approval rate under this program is extraordinarily high: 99.7% in FY 2017; 99.1% in FY 2016; etc. As I said earlier, those numbers may be slightly misleading in that there could be people who don’t apply because they know their approval would be rejected, but it also suggests that there isn’t a massive unmet need.
With the way this legislation is being sold the (real and welcome) gains in liberty will come at an unnecessary cost of a lot of false hope, based on an inaccurate picture of what the actual situation is.
False hope and inaccurate pictures go hand in hand with government action.
Sick people need hope. When someone gives up, it is all over. But people who have hope…
Before this legislation, terminally ill people were being treated like animals who are removed from an owner, because the Humane Society didn’t like what the owner was doing, and taken to a “shelter” where they would be killed after 48 hours. We know better than these creatures do about the value and adequacy of their own lives.
I only pray this is definitively moving us a safer distance from the contagion of the UK system, which recently effectively euthanized babies Charlie and Alfie against their parents’ wishes.
And if you say, hey, they probably couldnta lived long anyway–well, I think it was Learned Hand who pointed out that murder is never more than a shortening of life.
Thank you President Trump, for your common-sense rejection of Euroglobalism! This is why we elected you.