Will ‘Right To Try’ Experimental Drugs Help The Dying In Tennessee? Doctors Aren’t Convinced

Dr. Matthew Peachey specializes in treating people at the end of their lives.

It’s a lot more than giving patients sedatives and painkillers. His focus is on helping the terminally ill figure out how best to use the time they have left.

“This is a very vulnerable group of people that are prone to having false hopes or getting taken advantage of,” he said. “The most important thing is for us to be very realistic and very honest about what our expectations are.”

Peachey, an assistant professor of internal medicine and palliative medicine at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, has concerns about a bill now under consideration at the state legislature called Right to Try.

The proposal,
House Bill 143, would give dying patients legal authority to buy experimental drugs from manufacturers, even if they haven’t been approved. The idea is to help them go around the Food and Drug Administration, which requires complex and lengthy tests before medicines can hit the market.

Five states have already passed Right to Try. Lawmakers can’t seem to resist the opportunity to help the dying — at no apparent cost to taxpayers.

But few drug companies seem interested. Peachey has an idea why:

“You have to keep in mind that what they want to show is that this medicine is safe and effective. If they start to give this to a large number of people who are near the end of life already, and many of those people go on to die, that makes the drug look bad in the greater process.”

Tennessee legislators could get a chance to mull these questions on Wednesday, when Right to Try is scheduled to come up again for debate.