experimental drugs
oracknows | November 9, 2016Yesterday, I wrote about alternative medicine clinics in Germany that offer a combination of alternative cancer cures plus experimental therapeutics administered improperly outside the auspices of a clinical trial. In particular, I discussed two cases. The first was British actress Leah Bracknell, who is raising money to go to one of these alternative cancer clinics to treat her stage IV lung cancer. the second was a British woman named Pauline Gahan, who was diagnosed with metastatic stomach cancer and has thus far spent £300,000 for a combination of vitamin infusions, “detox,” and Keytruda…
oracknows | May 25, 2015When I wrote yesterday about the cruel sham that is "right-to-try," , one criticism (among many) that I made of these misguided, profoundly patient-unfriendly laws was that I have as yet been unable to find a single example of a patient who has managed to obtain access to an experimental therapeutic through such a law, much less been helped by it. So-called "right-to-try" laws, of course, claim to provide a mechanism by which patients with terminal illnesses can obtain access to experimental therapeutics not yet approved by the FDA but still in clinical trials. They are, as I've pointed out,…
oracknows | May 25, 2015Last year, I did several posts on what I consider to be a profoundly misguided and potentially harmful type of law known as "right-to-try." Beginning about a year and a half ago, promoted by the libertarian think tank known as the Goldwater Institute, right-to-try laws began popping up in state legislatures. I wrote about how these laws are far more likely to do harm than good, and that is a position that I maintain today. The idea behind these laws is to give terminally ill patients access to experimental drugs—in some cases drugs that have only passed phase I testing—that might help them.…