Policy Brief: Right to Try Act Essay

Introduction

Chronic illnesses continue to be a major public health concern for citizens in the United States as they require advanced comprehensive care which is also expensive. Currently, under federal law, patients who have serious chronic illnesses have only two options in accessing experimental therapies which may treat their condition. The path that is the most straightforward is participating in clinical research trials as a human subject. However, patients who cannot enroll in trial due to, failure to meet the eligibility criteria, geographic location, lack of finances or medical status can apply for the compassionate use program, which was designed to permit patients who are seriously ill to access treatments that they are not eligible to receive. To support this program, the federal and state governments have introduced laws which purpose to make experimental therapies to be easily accessible to patients with terminal illnesses, also referred to as the right to try laws.Policy Brief: Right to Try Act Essay

Chronically ill patients should undoubtedly be given access to promising experimental therapies in case alternatives have generally been exhausted. However, the same therapies ought not to harm a patient or expose them to adverse side effects. The present right to try laws only gives false hope to patients and expose them to significant health risks. Besides, it doesn’t provide patients with enough information to facilitate informed clinical decision making about using experimental therapies. Yet, huge numbers of chronically ill patients continue to enroll for these therapies. This paper is a call to action for health professionals and policymakers to improve the health and well-being of chronically ill patients by expanding the eligibility criteria for clinical trials, providing a comprehensive and clearly outlined informed consent and clarifying on the right limits beyond the right to try laws in clinical practice.Policy Brief: Right to Try Act Essay

Policy Alternatives

The number of terminally ill patients seeking experimental drugs under the right to try laws is gradually increasing. It is important that, as we seek to improve the access of patients to these drugs, some of the most potent reasons that contribute to the increased access should be carefully thought out. Research suggests that, the eligibility criterion for patients to participate in clinical trials in the United States limits most individuals from: participating as human subjects, increases the complexity, costs, and length of trials, it limits the ability to generalize the results of a study to a huge population that will eventually use a drug and generally prevents access to investigational drugs (Harpham, 2018). This, therefore, requires that to reduce the number of chronically ill patients enrolling for the compassionate use program who expose themselves to greater health risks, issues regarding participation and enrolment for clinical trials should first be addressed. The best alternative would be expanding the eligibility criteria and eliminating potential barriers.Policy Brief: Right to Try Act Essay

Alternatively, to ensure that the impact of the risks are significantly reduced, chronically ill patients who wish to participate in experimental therapies should be presented with comprehensive and clear clinical data that is supported by evidence-based research. This data should exhaust on the informed consent given by a patient to participate (Harpham, 2018). The current right to try laws outline that patients can ask for experimental therapy drugs that have only passed phase I clinical trials and are yet to be approved by the FDA. However, this information is limited to use in signing an informed consent.