My mother, Audrey Princeton, just passed and her final weeks were wrought with dementia and discomfort. In time, I will engage a discussion on palliative care and end of life matters, and in the meantime share the following post from my colleague Jim Gray.
Where more graphically should Liberty be honored than for people diagnosed with a short time to live due to terminal illnesses? So if they desire to take a chance with “experimental” drugs, why should government tell them that they cannot? What gall! If these people feel they have even a five percent chance of extending their lives, why should they not be “allowed” to take that chance? Or if they simply want to make a contribution to the rest of us by showing what drugs do not work, why should they be deprived of that opportunity?
One of the appropriate functions of government is to set up a system that makes accurate information more available to us all. So if a drug has not yet been proved to be effective for its intended purpose, require the labels to say so. Remember laetrile? That was a drug taken from apricot seeds that was advertised to cure cancer, and the claim was found not to be true. So require that information to be on the label, but don’t prohibit it! The same is true even if a drug is actually found to be harmful. Require the label to say so, but allow the customer to choose. The government is not our mother, and adults should have the Liberty to make their own decisions about what they put into their bodies. Particularly the terminally ill!
Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)