This past week, a federal appeals court decided that terminally ill patients don’t have a constitutional right to experimental meds. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned last year’s decision by a smaller panel of the same court, which held that terminally ill patients may not be denied access to potentially lifesaving drugs.

This is a hotly contested issue. FDA approval generally requires extensive testing that can involve years of trials and thousands of patients. But the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs and the Washington Legal Foundation sued the FDA in 2003, seeking access for terminally ill patients to drugs that have undergone preliminary safety testing in as few as 20 people.

The ruling occurs amid a furious controversy over the way the FDA handles safety concerns, in general, and accusations that AIDS drugs are treated differently than cancer meds. So we asked your reaction to the court ruling. The poll wasn’t scientific, but the results suggest the debate is far from over.

No - 69 votes, or 65 percent, said the court ruling doesn’t make sense;
Yes - 37 votes, or 35 percent, agreed with the court.

Total voters: 106