Is "Right to Try" a Good Idea?

Last night, President Trump called on the FDA to speed the approval of drugs to treat life-threatening diseases, "deriding the agency’s current process as 'slow and burdensome'," according to this STATnews article.

One solution to alleviating FDA’s “slow and burdensome” approval process and getting potentially life-saving drugs to patients is "Right to Try" laws that would allow people with fatal illnesses to gain access to experimental medicines, even though they are not enrolled in a clinical trial. VP Pence and other lawmakers support this approach (see here).

“We should reform FDA so it is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety and let people start using them at their own risk,” said Jim O’Neill, a managing director at Mithril Capital Management, a venture capital firm run by Peter Thiel, the billionaire Trump donor and transition team advisor and candidate for FDA Commissioner (see here). “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.”

I decided to ask my readers if they think this is a good idea or not and to also submit comments to support their views.

So far, I've received nearly 50 responses to my survey and more than 30 interesting comments, some of which I share with you here. I invite you to take the survey and give me your opinion as well.

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