In March 2014, a small Internet storm was created around #savejosh, a social media campaign that in four intense days got a pharmaceutical company to give a dying boy a potentially lifesaving drug. A bone marrow transplant to treat kidney cancer had left 7-year-old Josh Hardy vulnerable to an adenovirus that would give most people nothing worse than a common cold but in his case was about to be fatal.
His doctors wanted to try brincidofovir, an antiviral drug that was still being evaluated for approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Josh’s family had asked the manufacturer, a small company called Chimerix, to provide it to Josh at no cost under an FDA exception called “compassionate use.” The company refused twice, then yielded to the online outcry. Josh got the drug and survived — but, as explained by Helen Ouyang in the June issue of Harper’s magazine, it’s debatable whether this was the morally right decision.
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