Exclusive — Ron Johnson Hits Wisconsin Airwaves with Ad Highlighting ‘Right to Try’ Life-Saving Success

Matthew BoyleApril 13, 2022

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who is facing reelection this year in Wisconsin, just launched a new television and digital ad highlighting the success of his “Right to Try” legislation and showcasing a real-world example of a life it saved, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

Johnson, arguably the Democrats’ top target in 2022 U.S. Senate races, on Wednesday launched a television ad featuring the story of Joel Webb.

“In late October of 2021, I got COVID,” Webb says in the ad, provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its public release. “I was pretty sure I was at the end of my rope.”

Joel’s wife Jennifer Webb says next that she “knew we were in trouble when we decided to bring in our attorney to start having Joel sign end-of-life documents, business documents.”

“My last try was an experimental medication—she put me on the Aviptadil,” Joel says. “That next morning when I woke up, I was a new man.”

“Because of Ron Johnson’s Right to Try bill, I have my husband today,” Jennifer says.

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Johnson for years—dating back to 2014—led efforts in the U.S. Senate to pass Right to Try legislation, which allows terminally ill patients to try experimental as-of-yet-unapproved medical treatments to try to save their lives.

On his U.S. Senate website, Johnson details the timeline of what eventually led to Congress passing—and then-President Donald Trump signing into law—his Right to Try legislation in the spring of 2018. It started back in 2014, when he met a woman named Trickett Wendler.

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Wendler, a young mother of three who was suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
(ALS), met with Johnson in Washington, DC. Wendler was unable to get new cutting edge ALS treatments because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had yet to fully approve groundbreaking new medications, but she faced a terminal diagnosis.

That year, five states passed Right to Try laws, but federally there was still no solution. Wendler died a short time later, in 2015, and several other states began considering their own ideas—but Johnson wanted a federal law. He pressed the FDA for answers on this and other cases, and while the FDA scrambled to maintain its status quo amid the bureaucratic morass, Johnson then introduced his own federal Right to Try legislation in 2016, named after Wendler.

Eventually, when Trump was elected, he backed the effort and Johnson was able to secure passage of his proposal out of the U.S. Senate. A U.S. House companion bill also passed—which Trump signed in 2018. Trump regularly touts it as a success—it definitely was one of the biggest of his presidency—but it would not have happened if not for the efforts of Johnson.

Johnson’s Wisconsin U.S. Senate seat is one of several Republicans are defending in battleground states in 2022. Others include open seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Missouri, as well as the seat of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) who is up for reelection in Florida. Democrats have unleashed vicious attacks on Johnson as they seek to flip this seat to maintain their power in the U.S. Senate—a chamber that is currently split 50-50, meaning Democrats, since they hold the White House and Vice President Kamala Harris breaks the tie, have the majority.

But if they were to prevail, things like these lifesaving treatments might not happen, since it was Johnson who got it done.

On a website in which he details the efforts he led to get Right to Try passed, Johnson explains just how much opposition he faced from the swamp in Washington, DC, to getting it done. He describes when he first met Trickett Wendler, which is when he decided to take up the cause of Right to Try.

“Trickett was a young mother of three beautiful children, and she had recently been diagnosed with ALS, frequently referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease,” Johnson writes. “There are no known cures, and the disease is always fatal. Trickett was in D.C. advocating for herself and others stricken with this horrible disease. When I mentioned my meeting with, and support for, the Goldwater Institute’s efforts regarding Right to Try, tears began streaming down Trickett’s cheeks. It was at that moment I decided to champion federal Right to Try legislation.”

But special interests and government bureaucrats aligned against him, obstruction that would take years of work to overcome—which he eventually did.

“Little did I know how much resistance I would encounter during the four-year path to its final passage. Opposition to Right to Try came from both Big PHARMA and the FDA,” Johnson continues. “Drug companies have legitimate concerns that terminal patients using their experimental drugs will lead to adverse effects and prevent drugs that should be approved from gaining FDA approval. The FDA’s opposition was more baffling. I assume it’s either its risk-averse nature or regulatory capture of the agency by Big PHARMA.”