Today, the Supreme Court declined to accept an appeal in a case that asks the question — do terminally ill patients have the right to access to experimental drugs ?:

The Supreme Court today declined to consider whether dying patients have a right to be treated with experimental drugs not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The court, without comment or recorded dissent, let stand a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which said the terminally ill have no constitutional right to drugs the agency had considered safe enough for additional testing. The challenge was brought by the Washington Legal Foundation and the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs. The latter organization is headed by Frank Burroughs of Fredericksburg, and named in honor of his daughter, Abigail Burroughs, who was diagnosed at 19 and died at 21 of a form of cancer rare in someone her age. The young woman died in 2001, and the drug she was seeking was later approved.

Because, of course, a bureaucrat in Washington has the right to decide if someone who will die anyway should try a risky procedure.

What is particularly distressing about this is that this wasn’t a ruling on the merits of the case, it was simply a ruling on whether the court would accept the case for appeal. All that’s needed to accept a case is a “yes” vote from four of the nine justices. Which means there aren’t even four members of the Supreme Court willing to give this issue the hearing it deserves.

This issue is personal to me because I have a family member who died from cancer and if there was any chance that an experimental drug or procedure would have prolonged her life, she would’ve tried it. She was my mother.

Today, the Supreme Court effectively said that she, and the millions of other people suffering from conditions that will kill them, can just die.