Six-year-old Jordan McLinn has a terminal illness called Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The disease will leave him in a wheelchair by age 13 and shortens his life expectancy to just 20 years.

There is no cure for Duchenne, but there is a drug in clinical trials that transforms it from a fatal illness into a chronic condition. That drug is showing tremendous promise. Not only is it stopping the disease progression, it’s reversing it. Children who were wheelchair bound are walking, running and playing with their friends again. At its earliest the drug won’t be approved by the FDA until 2022, likely far too late for Jordan.

Diego Morris was diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of bone cancer when he was 11. After exhausting all available treatments, his doctors at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital recommended that the family relocate to England so Diego could be treated with a drug that has been approved there for years and has been awarded the UK’s highest honor for a breakthrough medication.

Diego’s family could afford the move, so they did. He lived in England for a year, received treatments, and now he’s a healthy, typical teenage boy. The drug that saved Diego’s life has been under consideration by the FDA for over a decade. What happens to the New Hampshire 11-year-old whose family has no means to move to England to be treated?

This tale of two boys illustrates the importance of state right-to-try laws, such as HB 1138, which easily passed the House and is now being considered in the Senate.

Every year a million Americans with terminal diagnoses will hear from their doctor that there are no options left, and it’s time to get their affairs in order. What they really mean is that in their toolbox of approved medications, there’s nothing left.

But the truth is there are more than 500 treatments just for cancer stuck in the FDA’s pipeline right now, many already available in Europe.

“Right to try” allows patients with a terminal illness, who have tried all existing treatments with no success, with their doctor’s recommendation and help, the opportunity to access new treatments that are being safely used in government-approved clinical trials but have not yet been fully approved.

Twenty-seven states have adopted right to try and it is under consideration in 20 more states, including New Hampshire.

Let’s be clear about what kind of treatments we’re talking about. We’re not talking about pimple cream for healthy teens. This is about people with Lou Gehrig’s disease and brain cancer – diseases that will kill you.

If you were on a sinking ship, would you pass on the only available lifeboat because the government hadn’t certified it yet? Of course not. You’d say, put the lifeboat in the water.

“Right to try” gets the lifeboats in the water. The boats might not work, but the side effect of denying that opportunity is certain drowning – death.

As Ted Harada, a 38-year-old ALS sufferer said: “It’s not called right to a cure, it’s called ‘right to try.’ Don’t deny us that opportunity.”

In a recent article in this newspaper, Lisa Kearns and Arthur Caplan argued this is too risky and could cause a more accelerated or painful death. They failed to mention that these medicines have to be in Phase II or III of the FDA approval process where patients lucky enough to qualify for government-sanctioned clinical trials are taking the same risks.

Fewer than 3 percent of cancer patients are selected for clinical trials. That leaves 97 percent stuck unable to access a drug in trials that their doctor, based on medical evidence and judgment, believes is their best hope. HB 1138 is for those 97 percent.

Ethics, at least mine, dictate that when debating an issue, whether in a newspaper or on the House floor, you should use facts and give your opponents the chance to be heard. Kearns and Caplan incorrectly claimed that no patient has been treated under a “right to try” law. The fact is more than 35 known cancer patients have received treatment under right-to-try laws. Kearns and Caplan said in a teleconference this week – that did not allow proponents of the law to speak – that HB 1138 “should die” in the state Senate. I disagree. It should pass so that Granite Staters can survive. We “Live Free or Die” and deserve every opportunity to avoid the latter.

(Rep. Frank Edelblut, a Wilton Republican, is a candidate for governor.)