‘Right to Try’ Bill May Not Be As Helpful As Trump Says

Donald Trump signed the “right to try” bill last week that will grant terminally ill patients access to experimental, untested drugs without the approval of the FDA. Previously, people looking to use drugs that are still in clinical trials could appeal to the FDA under “compassionate use” laws. The FDA approved 99 percent of these requests from 2004 to 2014, according to FDA researchers.

Trump praised the bill during the signing and talked about how many lives could now be saved “Patients with life threatening illness will finally have access to experimental treatments that could improve or even cure their conditions. These are experimental treatments and products that have shown great promise, and we weren’t able to use them before, now we can use them. Often times they are going to be very successful, it is an incredible thing,” he said.

Medical ethicist and Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center Art Caplan told Boston Public Radio Wednesday that Trump is wrong about the bill’s potential to save lives.

“Trump is as about as accurate about [ ‘right to try’ ] as the he is about the Philadelphia Eagles taking a knee during the national anthem, which is to say, not at all,” Caplan said.”

Caplan criticized the bill saying that the real power to distribute experimental drugs does not come from the FDA, but from the companies who make the drugs. “The FDA can’t give anything to anybody,” he said. “The company has to give it to me. The FDA can’t give anything.”

Caplan also warned about the danger of taking experimental drugs that have not yet been tested on humans, saying that the chances of a patient being killed or receiving adverse effects is far greater than with approved drugs.

“We don’t know what dose to give you, whether we should give it to you three times a day, five times a day, we don’t know anything,” he said.

Medical ethicist Art Caplan is head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center and the co-host of the Everyday Ethics podcast. To listen to his entire interview, click the audio player above.