Want to live? You now have a right to try.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

Signaling a tide change for terminally ill patients, Louisiana became the second state in several days to allow terminally ill patients to access experimental medications that could save their lives, as Gov. Bobby Jindal signed the Right to Try Act into law. Two weeks earlier, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper did the same, thus enabling terminally ill patients under the care of their doctors and cooperating drug companies to receive potentially life-saving medications that have been deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration but still are years away from being approved for market.

More than 1,000,000 Americans die each year of terminal illness. It takes more than a decade and $1,000,000,000 to bring a single life-saving treatment to market, and fewer than three percent of the sickest patients are able to access drugs through clinical trials. In other words, the vast majority of patients die knowing that there may be a drug in existence access life-saving medications. that could help...