treatment

Pennsylvania, one of the first colonies-turned-states to declare unalienable a person’s right to life, must act soon to avoid becoming one of the last states to secure for terminally ill patients the right to try to save their own lives.

The FDA’s approval process takes years, and for thousands of terminally ill patients, those years may be the difference between life and death. Aware of the risks, many patients are nonetheless willing to try medicines and treatments that are still under investigation in clinical trials. For a significant number of these patients, the alternative is certain death.

There are probably more myths about health care public policy than anyone outside the mathematics department at MIT can put a number to. I recently ran across one of the more uninformed myths, one that has led to a great deal of bad public policy.