Expanded right-to-try law would encourage more innovative, life-saving treatments
Nine years ago, New Hampshire adopted a right-to-try law. It allows terminally ill patients to access medications that have cleared Phase 1 clinical trials but are not commercially available.
Since that law passed, huge gains have been made in the treatment of rare illnesses. New Hampshire’s law has fallen out of date. A bill working its way through the Legislature this year could not only update the law but leap the state ahead of others, making it an incubator of innovative medical treatments.
Right-to-try laws swept the country a decade ago as states realized the need to let terminally ill citizens bypass the federal Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) slow regulatory process. While trying to protect the broader public, the federal bureaucracy prevents terminally ill patients from accessing promising drugs.
Right-to-try laws give terminally ill patients immediate access to promising treatments when they don’t have time to wait for a new drug to complete years’ worth of trials.
Today, medical treatments are advancing much faster than the federal bureaucracy can process them. The cutting edge of drug development can even involve tailoring treatments to an individuals’ specific genetic makeup. Such narrowly tailored medications might never go through the FDA’s years-long approval process for mass-market drugs. Because New Hampshire’s right-to-try law applies only to treatments that have completed part of the federal regulatory process, it doesn’t allow access to the newest, most cutting edge treatments.
Rep. Lisa Mazur has introduced a solution. House Bill 701 allows terminally ill patients to give informed consent to try experimental treatments that haven’t gone through FDA trials.
If a terminally ill patient has a condition for which there are “no comparable or satisfactory United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved treatment options available,” the patient could give consent to try an experimental treatment. If that consent is given, the provider could not be sued for harm that might occur to the patient, as long as the provider engaged in no willful misconduct.
Medical innovation is evolving rapidly, and the FDA’s approval process has not caught up. Expanding New Hampshire’s right-to-try law would do more than provide hope to terminally ill patients. It could make New Hampshire a destination for further medical innovation.
When New Hampshire adopted its right-to-try law in 2016, it was the 30th state to do so. Only eight states have adopted laws like HB 701 that allow terminally ill patients and providers the legal space to try potentially life-saving treatments that are in the early stages of development.
Updating the state’s right-to-try law not only could save lives in New Hampshire, but it would encourage further medical innovation that could save the lives of untold others in the future. From both humanitarian and economic development perspectives, expanding the law could prove highly beneficial for the state.
