Drug-addled

A U.S. appeals court, of course just following the dictates of the federal government, tells the dying to just suck it up and deal with it:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Terminally ill patients do not have a constitutional right to experimental drugs not approved by regulators, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires a wide battery of research, ranging from animal and laboratory tests to advanced trials with people, before it will consider approving a new drug. Manufacturers say the process can take up to 10 years.

If the government wants to have wildly different rules for dangerous drugs -- alcohol legal, cocaine illegal, marijuana illegal but increasingly tolerated, nicotine legal but users increasingly stigmatized, fine, though it is philosophically incoherent and morally indefensible. If it wants to tightly regulate drugs that sick people need to get better, that's OK, too.

But to tell the terminally ill (defined as people who have no reasonable expectation to live more than a year) they have to wait 10 years for a drug-approval process? To "protect" from dangerous drugs people who are grasping at straws? What strong word haven't I used yet? Unconscionable? Yes, that says it.