No right to experimental drugs for dying patients: Supreme Court

This news published in the new www.yahoo.com is an indicative of cautious measures taken by the legal authority in USA to safeguard the use of drugs yet to receive FDA approval, in particular to the treatment of terminally ill patients. This decision is well supported with the arguments for having clinical trials to establish the efficacy of a drug prior to its application.  The...

One, twenty years ago I was the chairman of the government affairs committee of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics; under that role my committee was successful lobbying for approval new investigational drugs for possible treatment of AIDS. We were successful in getting the FDA to approve the testing of those drugs to dying AIDS patients. Such approval led to the discovery...

The Supreme Court, in refusing to hear arguments in a case brought that would make it easier for patients to gain access to non-approved drugs, brought a legal end to the request of the Abigail Alliance. This suit would have circumvented the drug approval process while leading to patients receiving therapy on the basis of hope and hype, not results. We may not like all the FDA rulings but we must...

1.    It is human nature to believe that an experimental drug (for that matter almost  any drug)  will be of value when facing death.  Unfortunately, such a belief stems from hopelessness combined with  ignorance.  Therefore, this decision should  quiet the clamor for the availability of such drugs to terminally patients. 2.  The emotional debate...

The Supreme Court has rejected the use of experimental drugs by the dying patients on the grounds that "The framers (of the US constitution) understood that the pursuit of life is an inalienable right that should not be abridged without due process of law." Over the years our patients with terminal illness have traveled outside the US to purchase hope when our management was offering none. Although...