Former President Donald Trump has boasted in recent months about "Right To Try," a law he signed in 2018. It's aimed at boosting terminally ill patients' access to potentially lifesaving medications not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration. "We have things to fight off diseases that will not be approved for another five or six years that people that are very sick, terminally ill, should be able to use.
But there was no mechanism for doing it," Trump said Aug. 30, speaking in Washington, D.C.
, to supporters of the conservative parental rights advocacy group Moms for Liberty. He also said that because of Right To Try, "we have saved thousands and thousands of lives." Trump similarly praised the program during an Aug.
17 rally in Pennsylvania, in a podcast interview with a conservative commentator, and during his Republican National Convention acceptance speech: "Right To Try is a big deal," Trump said then. Medical experts who've studied the experimental treatment program, however, say there's no evidence to support Trump's claims. These experts say Right To Try weakened regulations intended to protect patients.
What is right to try? The Trickett Wendler, Frank Mongiello, Jordan McLinn, and Matthew Bellina Right To Try Act, aka Right To Try, passed Congress on a bipartisan basis and was signed into law in 2018. It sought to streamline the process for getting potentially lifesaving drugs that weren't yet FDA-approved to terminally ill patients. The speed matters; ind.