pudge's Journal: There are these things called LAWS

Terminally ill patients have no constitutional right to experimental drugs. Well, duh.

There's nothing in the Constitution about terminally ill people. You could argue that everyone has a Constitutional right to experimental drugs, but not that terminally ill people have some special right.

"What the opinion by Judge Griffith is saying is, 'We don't want to risk one life or a few lives, even at the expense of the lives of hundreds or thousands of people,'" Burroughs said. "The logic of that escapes me."

Well, no, that's not what she is saying. What she's saying is that the law does not give this right that you claim.

In a sharply worded dissent, Judge Judith W. Rogers called the ruling "startling." She said courts have established the right "to marry, to fornicate, to have children, to control the education and upbringing of children, to perform varied sexual acts in private, and to control one's own body even if it results in one's own death or the death of a fetus. ... But the right to try to save one's life is left out in the cold despite its textual anchor in the right to life."

Well, no. In some of those cases, the court recognized existing rights, it didn't establish them. In others though, yes, it did create those rights, and it was obviously wrong to do so.

You have a legislature. Use it. I have no problem whatever with allowing terminally ill patients access to experimental medication, in theory. But there's not a single bit of justification under the law or Constitution for a rational court to allow it against the will of the people as expressed through the Congress and President in the actions of the FDA.

[The court] said the matter is not closed and said Congress might be a better venue than the courts to address the issue.

Duh.

Where the rights are

[jdavidb]

Constitutionally, the right of terminally ill patients to experimental drugs, or the lack thereof, is a private matter between the terminally ill patient and his state. The Tenth Amendment is explicit on that.

Morally, of course, anybody has the right to pay for anything that somebody else will voluntarily provide at that price. And, of course, nobody has the right to force anybody else to pay for what they want. If a state prevents a terminally ill patient from buying a drug he or she wants, the state

Re:

[pudge]

Constitutionally, the right of terminally ill patients to experimental drugs, or the lack thereof, is a private matter between the terminally ill patient and his state. The Tenth Amendment is explicit on that.

I can sortof accept that (I think an argument could be made that the Ninth Amendment protects our right to abuse drugs), but my point that this has nothing (constitutionally) to do with whether the patient is terminally ill still stands. Your argument would be phrased just as well (and I think you'd agree :-):

Constitutionally, the right of [anyone] to experimental drugs, or the lack thereof, is a private matter between [themselves] and his state.