Political Quotes

“I do want to point out the fact that the Right to Try bill only allows access to drugs that have already passed phase 1 safety approval from the FDA. There has been an awful lot of misunderstanding from that standpoint. All we are asking is, what this bill would do is allow terminal patients who have no other options--they have exhausted all treatment options, they do not qualify for a clinical trial, they are near death or, according to the House bill, subject to severely premature death. It just gives those individuals the right to choose for themselves, not have a faceless bureaucrat at the FDA make that decision. We passed this unanimously from the good efforts of my colleague, the Senator from Indiana, who will speak shortly, but also Senators Alexander and Murray. We spent many hours in discussion crafting a bill that passed unanimously. By the way, that didn't surprise me because out of the 39 States that passed Right to Try through their legislature, 38 have passed it and signed it into law. Of the legislators who voted for Right to Try, 98 percent have voted yes. That is a vote tally of 5,604 to 126 because it makes so much sense to give those terminally ill patients the freedom to make those decisions themselves. The good news is, the House passed the Right to Try bill--not unanimously--with bipartisan support. The vote was 267 to 149, and 35 Democrats joined, most Republicans voting yes.…”