[ExI] Startup Helps Dying Patients Get Experimental Drugs

[BillK]

Well, that didn't take long.

<http://www.fastcoexist.com/3038824/a-real-dallas-buyers-club-a-startup-helps-sick-and-dying-patients-get-experimental-drugs>
<https://mytomorrows.com/>
Quote:
myTomorrows is working with drug companies to get not-yet-approved
treatments stuck in regulatory purgatory to patients--giving them one
last chance to survive.

myTomorrows works by negotiating directly with drug developers for
access to promising treatments, compiling accurate data on the drug's
risks and successes to date, streamlining the application paperwork,
and later receiving data on the use of the drug. It aims to provide a
one-stop shop for desperate patients seeking options, as well as
biotech and pharmaceutical companies that are too short-staffed to
deal with requests from sick patients or want to hold the whole
process at arms-length. The startup's lawyers have spent three years
weeding through the specific laws in each European nation. "We do all
the paperwork in basically an automated fashion," says Brus.

The flipside, of course, is that there's a reason for regulatory
review--an experimental drug is riskier and may not work, offering
false hope to a dying person.

Brus and his colleagues aren't the only people pushing to ease
restrictions to early-stage drugs. In the U.S., the libertarian
Goldwater Institute is lobbying to pass "Right To Try" legislation in
all 50 states that would give doctors the "ok" to prescribe
terminally-ill patients unapproved drugs that have undergone minimum
basic safety testing. In the last year or so, it's succeeded in
passing bills in five states: Colorado, Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan,
and Missouri. Still, these bills might not change much, says Alison
Bateman-House, a researcher who specializes in compassionate use at
NYU's Department of Medical Ethics: The FDA has ultimate authority and
could still require patients apply to individually for exemptions.
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BillK