Demanding rights

Among several ongoing experiments with policies and programs to facilitate preapproval access to drugs, the most controversial is being conducted by state legislatures.

Patients and their families, frustrated by lack of access to experimental drugs, have persuaded 24 state governments in the U.S. to enact right-to-try laws granting patients with terminal diseases and no other options the right to bypass FDA and receive unapproved drugs that have completed Phase I testing...