steelslaver; When the current medical treatments don't offer much hope and you are looking at a negative outcome said:
Because my mother suffered from ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and eventually passed from it in 1991, I was heavily involved in attending seminars and conferences dealing with it. ALS is a terminal diagnosis, and back in the 1990s there was only one drug approved as a therapeutic, and it only extended a patient's life for maybe 3 months. At one conference there was a lecture on the drug approval process. The inspiration finally hit me to stand up during the Q & A session and basically say, "If I was diagnosed with ALS, why couldn't I receive a drug before it came to the end of the approval process? I would sign any waiver you wanted. I'm terminal, what have I got to lose?"
The response I got from the presenter was essentially, "I'm sorry. There is nothing we can do." I've carried that with me for years.
I'm happy to hear about successes under the "right-to-try" law.