Montana lets firms sell unapproved drugs to patients

A state just made it legal to sell medicine nobody has proven works. Montana's 'right-to-try' law, passed last year, lets biotech companies sell experimental drugs directly to patients. Politico reported Sept 15 that a privately run board decides which drugs qualify. That board has ties to a company running an unregulated medical clinic zone off the coast of Honduras.

This didn't come out of nowhere. Investors and biotech companies helped write Montana's law themselves, Politico and Business Insider both found. Now those same interests sit on the board deciding which treatments get sold. Phase 1 trials are small and short. They're designed to check a drug is safe, not that it actually treats anything. A drug can clear Phase 1 and still do nothing for the disease it targets.

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Will patients actually benefit, or just pay for hope? Nobody knows yet. The first drugs are only now moving through Montana's approval process. What's already clear is the incentive problem. The companies picking which drugs qualify are the same companies that profit when patients buy them.