1.   Another manufacturer, Hoffmann-LaRoche, has closed its compassionate use program to patients in Florida, in an effort to press the state to pay for more.

2.   A key question will be whether to recommend compassionate use treatment based on one positive trial.

3.   Currently, the company is providing the wafer free to some patients as part of a compassionate use program.

4.   In addition, the FDA has already cleared Myotrophin for certain patients with the debilitating disease on a compassionate use basis.

5.   The government settled the case through the compassionate use program, under which the FDA gives patients access to unapproved drugs if no other therapies will help them.

6.   The legal status of marijuana is a subject worthy of serious debate but not through the pretense of fostering compassionate medical use.

7.   Compassionate use allows doctors to administer unapproved treatments to terminally ill patients.