His son tried four different chemotherapies and radiation but died 2½ years later, said McCullough, who lobbies in the Capitol for chiropractors, among others.

While critics have said the bill could give patients “false hope,” McCullough said that “when you have stage IV cancer, I don’t think there’s anything such as false hope. You have to keep hoping. You have to keep trying.”

Under the bill on Nixon’s desk, experimental drugs could be given or sold to dying patients so long as the drug had passed the first of the FDA’s three- or four-phase testing process and the patient’s doctor had recommended it.

Drugs that have cleared the first phase “are determined to be safe,” asserted Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Springfield. “They just haven’t been determined to be effective yet.”

Others say calling phase one drugs safe is a stretch. Phase one research is conducted on a small group of volunteers — as few as 20 people — mainly to determine what dosage can be given without unacceptable side effects.

“It’s a tiny snapshot of what you really need to do, and that’s what the rest of the testing process is for,” said Caplan, the medical ethics scholar. The later phases gauge efficacy and safety with larger groups.