Interesting fact: a doctor can prescribe you any drug for any reason, regardless of what the drug was meant for, subject to a couple restrictions. So, if you ar

Interesting fact: a doctor can prescribe you any drug for any reason, regardless of what the drug was meant for, subject to a couple restrictions. So, if you are in such a terminal situation, and some studies have shown drug X, normally used to treat some other disease, could help people with your disease, the doctor can prescribe it to you even if the drug hasn't been FDA approved for that purpose. This is intentional: it allows doctors to use cutting-edge research and don't have to wait years for FDA approval. There are restrictions, of course. First, if a doctor start prescribing opiates to every patient s/he'll probably get a call from the DEA :). Second, insurance companies may refuse to pay for experimental treatments. And third is potential malpractice liability, but making sure the patient has informed consent can limit that. And this all only applies to drugs that are already FDA approved, just not for your specific use case. I should point out the only reason I know this is from an article about some drug companies that have been accused of encouraging doctors to use their drugs for non-FDA approved purposes to boost sales. So I may be missing some key details here.