According to the Goldwater Institute, more than 500,000 Americans died last year of cancer alone, and thousands more of other terminal illness. Promising treatments exist that could save their lives, but it takes a decade and a billion dollars for a drug to reach full FDA approval. Only 3% of the sickest Americans qualify for clinical trials, and the FDA protocol for approving drugs has not changed in fifty years.
If passed, Right to Try would enable terminally ill patients under the care of licensed doctors to access experimental drugs that have passed basic safety tests but whose efficacy is not yet conclusive.
Missouri representatives have passed the measure 139-0, and representatives in Louisiana and Colorado this week with votes of 96-0 and 65-0 respectively. In Arizona, lawmakers are poised to send Right to Try for voter approval on the November ballot.
“This is about saving lives,” said Darcy Olsen, President and CEO of the Goldwater Institute, which designed the Right to Try act and is working with lawmakers throughout the country to pass the reform. “Americans know that when their mortality is hanging in the balance, they deserve the right to try these potentially life-saving drugs.”