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Clinical Trials Exclude Patients Due to Travel Requirement

Posted on: November 20, 2007

There are reports of successful treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease, even for those in stage III, but they are still in clinical trail. The problem is the patient, my mother and probably thousands of others, can’t travel to the clinical site; patients may have other health problems, physical problems, financial problems, etc. A letter was sent to three different offices of L. Craig and M. Crapo on approximately June 19, 2007, inquiring about changing the rule requiring the patient to travel to the clinical site.

My mother seems to have reached the point of no return in these ensuing months. She will become bedridden until she dies. The following is an excerpt from my letter;

“If a medical doctor says that a patient is this close to becoming permanently incapacitated, the patient, with the approval of his/her guardian, should have access to those experimental drugs. When I visit the assisted living facility where my mother resides, I see people in the many different stages of Alzheimer’s to complete incapacitation . To me, drug companies should have a column marked “humanitarian” instead of one column where every person is just a case number on a page and nothing more.”

The following excerpt from an email was received from Larry Craig’s office on October 23, 2007, Please don’t blink as you read his concerns for Alzheimer’s patients; I only wrote to him about ONE issue, not issues. In the complete email there was absolutely no mention of my concern what so ever!
“Because of your past contact with me on issues of importance to you, I wanted to take this opportunity to provide you with an update on Senate activities and let you know how much I appreciate having the benefit of your thoughts.”

The rest of his email talked about things such as conservation, agricultural research, etc.

I had three thoughts when I finished reading his email… DUH! WHAT! DID ANYONE WHO RECEIVED MY LETTER AT THOSE THREE SITES EVEN READ THE WHOLE LETTER?

His email, it appears, because of the time delay since Minnesota, and he lost his committee chairmanship, he now has time to contact his constituents.

Cordially yours,

Kelley R. Benningfield

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