In the last three years, 33 U.S. states have passed laws aimed at helping dying people get easier access to experimental treatments that are still in the early stages of human testing. Supporters say these patients are just looking for the right to try these treatments. Such laws sound compassionate, but medical ethicists warn they pose worrisome risks to the health and finances of vulnerable patients. California’s “right to try” law went into effect in January. It protects California doctors and hospitals who want to prescribe any medicine that has successfully made it through a Phase 1 drug trial . That’s the first stage of human testing required by the Food and Drug Administration — usually, all the study participants are healthy in the small Phase 1 trial, and it focuses merely on a drug’s general safety and questions about dosage, not its effectiveness. Phase 2 and Phase 3 drug trials watch for toxic side effects of the experimental medicine among a group of people who have the
Source: Texas Public Radio
