Hello Freedomphiles! Did you hear the latest out of the United States Supreme Court? They have denied the appeal The Abigail Alliance to allow terminally-ill patients to try out un-approved medications.
The Abigail Alliance was started because of Abigail Burroughs, a beautiful 19-year old girl who had cancerous tumors in her head and neck. She wanted to try unproven Erbitux, because her oncologist was sure it would shrink the tumors, but she was denied. She died in 2001.
It was approved in 2004.
So, it is in her name that her friends and father fight for the right of the terminally-ill to make their own decisions and determine their own levels of accepted risk.
Which brings us to the story today out of The Los Angeles Times:
A federal judge dismissed the suit, saying the Constitution does not include such a right. The U.S. appeals court in Washington revived the alliance's claim in a 2-1 ruling in 2006. It said a "mentally competent, terminally adult patient" has a right to obtain "potentially lifesaving . . . new drugs" that have shown promise.
In August, however, the full U.S. appeals court in Washington reversed that ruling by an 8-2 vote. "There is no fundamental right 'deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition' of access to experimental drugs for the terminally ill," wrote Judge Thomas Griffith, a recent appointee of President Bush.
In September, lawyers for the Abigail Alliance petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the issue.
"The great majority of experimental drugs ultimately provide no benefit," said U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in urging the court to reject the appeal. These drugs can be quite dangerous, he added. "The risk of serious adverse health consequences is particularly acute with respect to experimental chemotherapy, because anti-cancer drugs are toxic by design."
The case ended with a one-line order dismissing the appeal in Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs vs. Eschenbach.
Yes, there is no fundamental right to experimental drugs written into the Constitution. Of course, they don't mention that there is also no right mentioned in the Constitution for the federal government to tell you what chemicals you can and cannot put into your own body.
This is a regulatory body that not only takes from us our freedom, but our right to life. As Alexander Volokh tells us in the pages of Reason:
* Seven thousand people die every year because the FDA hasn't approved the Ambu CardioPump, a CPR device that is available in just about every other industrialized country.
* Nine hundred people die every year because the FDA hasn't approved the OmniCarbon heart valve, which also is in use just about everywhere else.
* From November 1988 to May 1992, about 3,500 kidney cancer patients died waiting for the FDA to approve the drug Interleukin-2, which was already available in France, Denmark, and seven other European countries.
* In 1988 alone, between 7,500 and 15,000 people died from gastric ulcers caused by aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, waiting for the FDA to approve misoprostol, which was already available in 43 countries.
* And 22,000 people died between 1985 and late 1987 waiting for streptokinase, the first drug that could be intravenously administered to reopen the blocked coronary arteries of heart-attack victims.
Now, those are old statistics from 2005, and surely some of those things are now approved. But that doesn't mean that people didn't die waiting. And it doesn't hurt the Alliance's case that every drug they have tried to get for terminally-ill patients have since been approved.
Fat lot of good that does em now, eh?
In the Times article, lawyers for Abigal Alliance summed it up nicely:
Lawyers for the Abigail Alliance said theirs was a right-to-life case. They hoped the court would be more willing to say the Constitution protects the rights of people who are trying to live, not die. "If a patient has a right to refuse all treatment and die, surely she also had a right to assume some risks in a good faith attempt to save her own life," they said in their appeal.
True, but why does it have to be a terminally-ill patient who gets those rights? It should be any and all of us who can do that. It is our body, and our choice to make the decision about what we put into it. If we want to take the risk, we shouldn't be stopped.
This is why I advocate, if not dismantling the FDA altogether, removing its fangs. They should merely certify or not certify a drug. It should be our choice whether or not to take it. I am sure there are those of us who are cautious enough that we wouldn't take anything not approved by the FDA, and they can do that.
But for those of us who would like to try an alternate route, we shouldn't have the path blocked by our very own government.
