The Upside of Ebola? Support for “Right-To-Try” Laws and Patient Power

Pretend for a
moment that you or a loved one is diagnosed with Ebola and the
virus proceeds to a point where death is not simply a possibility
but likely. Would you be happy simply to mark time until the
inevitable takes hold? Or would you want as many options as
possible, even knowing full well most will fail?

If we start having more conversations about the ways in which
medical regulations need to change—and need to respect individual
patient desires—we might be able to add an upside to Ebola’s
arrival in the United States.

My latest Daily Beast column argues that the arrival of
Ebola in America should encourage “a conversation about the
regulations surrounding the development of new drugs and the right
of terminal patients to experiment with their own
bodies.”

Ebola in the United States may well accelerate adoption of
so-called right-to-try laws. These radical laws allow terminally
ill patients access to drugs, devices, and treatments that haven’t
yet been fully approved by the Federal Drug Administration and
other medical authorities. The patients and their estates agree not
to bring legal action against caregivers, pharmaceutical companies,
and insurers.

You don’t have to be a doctrinaire libertarian—though it
helps—to see the value in letting people with nothing left to lose
experiment on themselves. They may get a new lease on life. The
rest of us get meaningful information that may speed up the
development of the next great medical intervention.

Read the whole thing.