Should terminal patients be allowed to try experimental drugs? "Right to Try" laws offer hope for people trying to save their own lives.

• Author: Manning, Alex
• Position: Reason TV

IN 2013, David Huntley got the diagnosis: He had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

In addition to being a professor emeritus in the Department of Geological Sciences at San Diego State University, Huntley had been a marathoner, a scuba diver, and an Iron Man triathlete. For someone used to staying active, the illness--which degrades control over muscles. inhibiting walking, speaking, eating, and ultimately breathing--was hard to accept.

"The horror of this disease is the months and years leading up to the end," he told Reason TV in April. "Day by day you lose your dignity, your independence, your ability to move anything but your eyes."

ALS is fatal--we have no cure, and most people survive for just two to four years from its onset. There is, however, a promising new drug called GM6 04, which is currently undergoing clinical trials. Out of other options, Huntley sought access to the medication, but because it hasn't yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), he was denied.

"How is keeping a potentially life-saving drug from me saving my life?" he said at the time. "GM604 may fail to stop the progression... or it could extend my life and even restore some of the function I have lost. But at the very least, it [would give] me something with which to fight back against this horrendous disease."

On July 4,2015, Hundey died of respiratory failure.

Starlee Coleman doesn't think anyone should have to go through what Hundey did. So as a senior policy advisor at the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, she helped author a piece of legislation to do something about it. The bill, known as Right to Try, gives terminal patients "the ability to go around the FDA, essentially, in an effort to save their own lives." It has become the basis for laws in 23 states; 13 more are actively considering passing measures to extend a Right to Try to patients within their jurisdictions.

One of the reasons for the laws' stunning success rate is that they are narrowly tailored, applying only to treatments that have already made it past...