Monday, Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, said on social media that the Right to Try Act, which he helped pass, is helping the terminally ill by getting the federal government out of the way. Brooks cited the case of Natalie Harp, who recently appeared on Fox News praising the legislation.
“Glad to see legislation I championed in the House helping our fellow Americans,” Congressman Brooks said. “Passed by the Republican Congress and signed into law last year by President Trump, the Right to Try Act allows terminally ill patients access to experimental drug treatments that have not yet been fully approved by the Food Drug Administration. Natalie Harp, who has battled stage 2 bone cancer for the majority of her life, is benefitting directly from Right to Try. Now that the federal government is out of her way, Natalie is living with cancer rather than dying with cancer.”
Ms. Harp appeared on Fox News’ ‘Fox & Friends’ program to defend the Trump administration and the Right to Try Act.
Harp has battled stage 2 bone cancer for most of her life.
She said that President Donald J. Trump’s (R) “Right to Try” act allowed her to make a comeback. At one point in 2015 she was in a wheelchair, in pain, and had been denied participation in drug trials that she felt could have given her a after a chance.
“I’m not dying from cancer any more thanks to President Trump, I’m living with cancer,” she said.
President Trump phoned in to the program on Friday to celebrate his 73rd birthday. The President said then that Harp was a “young, beautiful woman” who had benefited from the Right to Try Act.
The measure allows terminally ill patients to access drug treatments that have not yet been fully approved by the U.S. Government’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
After a nurse accidentally mixed up her IV with a sample of sterile water, a mistake which almost killed her, she was offered opioids, medical marijuana, barbiturates, and was informed that she had a right to die by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking.
“I’m like ‘no, I just want to get better,” she said. She did not want a right to die; but rather access to the experimental treatments that she wanted.
After President Trump signed the Right to Try Act last year, Natalie was given access to the experimental treatment opportunities that she wanted. Thus far, that appears to be working for her.
“I’m walking. I am healthy. I am living the quality of life that I always wanted to have that it took me four years to find because I wasn’t offered it here,” Harp said. “It took President Trump going to Washington to be able to get that for me.”
Cancer has been politicized in the presidential race.
Former Vice-President and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden (D) promised to cure cancer this week at a campaign stop in Iowa.
“I promise you if I’m elected president, you’re going to see the single most important thing that changes America, we’re gonna cure cancer,” Vice-President Biden said.
Harp acknowledged that Biden certainly understands the devastation caused by cancer, after losing his son. Beau Biden to brain cancer in 2015; but believes that he shouldn’t use the disease as a “political tool.”
Congressman Brooks is also a cancer survivor, who was diagnosed with the disease in 2017 and endured treatments for the disease in 2017 and 2018.
Brooks represents Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District.
(Original reporting by Fox News’s Anna Hopkins contributed to this report.)
