Do terminally ill patients who have exhausted all other available, government-approved treatment options have a constitutional right to experimental treatment that may prolong their lives? On May 2, 2006, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a startling opinion, Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. Eschenbach, held "Yes." The plaintiffs, Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs and Washington Legal Foundation, sought to enjoin the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") from refusing to allow the sale of investigational new drugs that had not yet been FDA-approval for marketing.
Subscription models make publishers insist on controlling access to research they didn't perform, write up, or fund. They act like a midwives who insist on keeping (or hiding, or performing surgery on) other folks' babies.
Taxpayers pony up $28 billion annually for NIH to fund medical research, resulting in 60,000 annual published studies. First beneficiaries of that knowledge aren't doctors or patients, but journals that are prohibitively expensive for many.
"Academic literature should be freely available: developing countries need access; part time ... thinkers ... journalists and the public can benefit; ... you’ve already paid for much of this stuff with your taxes ... important new ideas from humanity"
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.