“Right to Try” Is Law, and It Shows Us the Future

President Trump signed the bill last week.

by Patrick Cox
June 5, 2018

A lot of people were surprised how quickly Right to Try (RTT) became federal law.

In theory, RTT will help patients with terminal diseases get life-saving drugs. In practice, it will have marginal if any benefit for most people who need drugs that haven’t gone through the FDA’s entire clinical trial process. However, what its passage says about the future is extremely important.

To understand why, we need to understand the two sides of the story.

Many of the most important institutions in our healthcare system, from Big Pharma to the FDA, opposed RTT. These institutions are incentivized to put caution and safety above all because they suffer directly when approved drugs cause unexpected harm. From their perspective, RTT is reckless.

On the other side of the argument is a large majority of Americans who favor a shift of medical responsibility from the federal government to doctors and patients. They want more control of their own medical decisions and tend to focu…