“Dallas Buyers Club” Missouri’s “Right to Try” law.

Whether it’s colon cancer, pancreatic cancer or other variation of terminal illness many clients who exhaust their treatment options now have a beacon of hope thanks to a new law that went into effect last year.

Missouri became the second state after Colorado to put a “Right to Try” law into effect. The Right to Try “RTT” bill (HB 1685) empowers terminally ill patients the right to try medications that have not been approved by the FDA.

The RTT bill aims to hasten access to unapproved drugs by eliminating the FDA’s role in the process. Since the 1960s, FDA has mandated that medications go through a rigorous three-stage investigation before doctors can prescribe them. RTT laws will help patients running out of time to expedite this process to obtain medication that may otherwise take as long as a decade to receive FDA approval.