Family pleas for company to give experimental drug to son with life-threatening illness

One family pleas for the company Chimerex to give a non-FDA approved medication to their 7-year-old son with a life-threatening illness.

Josh Hardy, a cancer survivor, has recently contracted a viral infection after a bone marrow transplant, and his family is begging Chimerex to show some compassion.

"We're trying to save our son," said Josh's dad, Todd Hardy, who is with him at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, according to USA Today.

Todd and his wife Aimee have took to social media sites and news stories to put the pressure on the company to give them the antiviral drug called brincidofovir. Thousands more people have contacted Chimerex asking them to consider Josh's case, company president and CEO Kenneth Moch said Monday.

But the company, which already turned down Josh's doctor's request for the drug, is not budging.

"We have have great compassion for this family," Moch said. "But this is not just about a single boy."

The company receives many requests for compassionate use for the drug, but it can only be doled out to those who meet a specific set of criteria -criteria that Josh does not meet.

The ongoing study isn't even testing the drug's effectiveness in children, let alone in people with adenovirus, the type of viral infection that Josh has.

A broader compassionate-use program ended two years ago, Moch says, and overall the company has provided the drug to 430 compassionate-use patients. But Chimerex is in a position shared by many small pharmaceutical companies.

They have limited resources and worried investors to think about, plus compassionate-use requests can slow down a drug's approval and expose a company to added risks if someone taking the drug outside of the study is harmed, Medical ethicist Arthur Caplan adds.

But he can understand a concerned parent's want for their child to be healthy.

"I have huge sympathy for the family. I think they are right to try and see what they can get for their child," he said.