Right to Try was one of the most important accomplishments of the Trump administration. Terminally ill patients now have access to experimental treatments even if they have not received FDA approval. "We have saved thousands and thousands of people."
Video transcript
And we did a lot of things medically. One thing I'd like to talk about is right to try. So you know what that is. I hope nobody in the room needs it. But we have the best labs, doctors, technicians, but our laboratories are the best for new medicines and everything. They're really amazing. But you can't get it approved. I mean, and rightfully, you can't get it by the FDA. They can't stand me, by the way. I used to push them. I got it down from 12 years to five years, but they need certain times. I mean, they do need. I want everything to be rushed. But you can't necessarily do that. But we have a situation where we have things that are really good. We're pretty sure they work. They may not, but we're pretty sure they work. And I said, why isn't it, if a person's terminally ill, why can't they use this stuff that may or may not work? Sure. It's been going on 48 years. They couldn't get it worked out. The country didn't want it because our country would be sued. The insurance companies definitely didn't want it. The labs didn't want it because they didn't want a terminally ill person to be using something that's going to be like show badly, where they have to put it down. They have to do their lists. And they don't want to be-- they call it a list. They didn't want to be on the list. Somebody's terminally ill and dies and using their medicine. And I understand that. So I got everybody in a room, every one of the doctors, the labs, the insurance companies, and even the country representatives, the Justice Department. They all came in because they couldn't get it done. I said, here's what we do. Somebody can use it. And you know, these people were going all over the world. They were going to Asia. They were going to Europe. And they had money. And they would get scammed many times. But they'd go all over the world. We couldn't do it here. And most of them had no money. And they'd go home and they'd die. I'd say, look, if somebody's terminally ill, I want to give them a shot at life. It's a great feeling, at least. At least they can say, well, you know, I've got something. And maybe it'll work. And maybe it won't. But the expression, what the hell do we have to lose? Somebody's terminally ill. Why? They were saying, we'll be sued. I said, you're not going to be sued. So we worked out. And it didn't take that long. After 48 years, within a period of about a month-- and then I got it approved by Congress, believe it or not, we could get things done. But think of this. We got it approved. And everybody agreed. Anybody that signed that document, you wouldn't sue anybody. If something happened to your family, the family would sign. The person would sign. No liability for anybody. And you have the right to try. We have saved thousands and thousands of people. And it's very impressive. [APPLAUSE] Some of the biggest-- some of the biggest proponents of it now are the people that fought it the hardest to get it, like the laboratories, the medical companies, because it actually showed that it worked. People are terminally ill. And in many cases, they came back. They had absolutely no problems. They had no disease. They had no anything. It's called right to try. We did that. Nobody thought we could get it approved. We got it approved. They signed a waiver of liability, which in business you sort of do. But I got everybody into a room. I said, we got to do this. And we've used-- I have a person who works for me was saved because of that. A very great person that works for me was saved because of right to try. There was no medicine. There was nothing was going to work. But there was a space age something, a medicine, that they were going to use and that they did use. And it saved, anyway, it saved millions of lives, all these different things that they're developing. And in some cases, it doesn't work. But in many cases, it does. I would say in many more cases, it does. So, Mike, we saved thousands and thousands of lives. And again, I hope nobody in this room needs it. But it's awfully good. It's awfully good. At least it gives you a hell of a shot. And it turned out to be really amazing.
Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.