The Federalist Society’s annual Student Symposium, held last weekend in Phoenix, opened a panel on “Mandates, Medicine, & Liberty” not with doctrine or case law, but with something more difficult to dismiss: a lived experience that turned abstract questions of medical autonomy into matters of urgency.
Diego Morris, now a second-year law student at Arizona State University, began with a question: Do you remember what it was like to be 11 years old? For him, he explained, it was baseball, at least until a sudden pain in his leg led to the devastating diagnosis of osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive bone cancer.
“After seeing multiple specialists,” Diego recalled, “a local orthopedic surgeon… believed I had a bone tumor.”
What followed was a race against time. Standard treatments proved ineffective. That’s when Diego and his family widened their search beyond the United States, eventually identifying a promising immunotherapy—one tested in the United States but unapproved by the FDA. With no viable pathway to access it at home, his family was forced to make a dramatic decision: stay and hope for the best or leave for London and continue the fight.
Diego is a fighter. “My time was short,” he said. “I needed access to this treatment… in order for it to be most effective.”
He took a flight to England and, after undergoing treatment in combination with chemotherapy, the gamble paid off. Diego returned to Arizona cancer-free. But the experience fundamentally reshaped his life and gave him a new sense of purpose.
From Survivor to Advocate
In the years that followed, Diego became one of the most recognizable young voices in the Right to Try movement. Beginning at age 13, he entered a world far removed from youth sports and school routines—testifying before lawmakers, speaking across the country, and pressing for changes to a regulatory system he had experienced firsthand.
“From the age of 13 to 18, I traveled the country… about why Right to Try legislation could potentially save lives,” he said.
That advocacy helped culminate in the passage of federal Right to Try legislation in 2018.
Now, as a law student, Morris is focused on what he describes as the next phase: extending Right to Try to individualized therapies tailored to a patient’s genetic profile.
“This new version of Right to Try is an extension of the hope that Right to Try initially gave to families like mine,” he said, calling personalized medicine “a miracle and a blessing” that existing law has yet to fully accommodate.
A Broader Debate on Medical Autonomy
Morris’s account set the stage for a broader discussion that moved from personal narrative to constitutional principles. At issue was a question that has garnered renewed attention in recent years: Who ultimately decides what risks a patient may take in pursuit of survival?
Goldwater Institute Executive Vice President Christina Sandefur framed the issue in stark terms. The current regulatory system, she argued, too often prioritizes government gatekeeping over individual choice—especially for patients with no remaining options.
“Make no mistake,” Sandefur said, “most patients are out of luck waiting for treatments that could potentially save their lives.”
Sandefur pointed to a stark statistic. Only a small fraction of critically ill patients—roughly 3 percent—can access clinical trials, she explained. For the rest, time continues to run, often without viable alternatives. Right to Try laws seek to change that by restoring a fundamental principle: medical autonomy.
“If a person owns her own life,” Sandefur argued, “then the right to make one’s own medical choices… must be fundamental.”
She emphasized that risk tolerance is inherently personal—and that bureaucratic processes, often spanning years or decades, can effectively deny patients their last chance.
“True respect for liberty means empowering individuals to make their own medical decisions,” she said, “even when—and especially when—those choices involve great risk.”
Hope, Law, and the Future
The panel ultimately highlighted a tension at the heart of modern medicine: the balance between safety and speed, regulation and innovation, government oversight and individual freedom.
For Diego Morris, that tension was not abstract. It was the difference between life and death.
There is a human cost to bureaucratic delay. As personalized medicine continues to advance, the legal system will face increasing pressure to adapt and more patients will rightfully demand a right to try.
