The Cause
Why a movie for a serious issue?
Through the power of the media of film, the mission of “Angel Fire" is to educate and firmly declare that hopeful, sufferable treatments to improve and extend the lives of patients that have been stricken with the scourge of cancer are being pursued by a distinct, pioneering segment of the medical community in the United States, alongside the strides being made in the Jewish State of Israel and some other countries.
While “Right to Try” is now a Federal Law in the USA, enacted to allow terminally ill patients access to drugs that are still considered experimental by the FDA, that law does not alleviate all barriers to alternative care for critical cases, especially one such as Glioblastoma. While the law is a step in the right direction, there are many loopholes and limitations in the right to try law and it would not have prevented the hurdles that Cherie had to fight against.
Media that matters
Suffice it to say, the strategy of spotlighting a story of injustice via motion picture has had some success in the past. But in 1993, the American drama film “Philadelphia," starring actors Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge the plight of the community stricken with HIV/AIDS.
The film reportedly contributed to an outcry directed toward the risk-averse FDA to approve promising therapies. The decade of the 1990s saw the creation of the National Task Force on AIDS Drug Development, large scale expanded access to pre-approved HIV therapies, and approval of a number of new drugs.
Incidentally, the Immunotherapy Treatment Protocol for Glioblastoma as highlighted in “Angel Fire," which was developed by medical pioneers in the United States and Israel, received repeated roadblocks by the U.S. Administration's HHS and FDA at the time. A repeat of the bureaucratic delays by the government (as was also witnessed by the desperate community inflicted with AIDS in the 1980s) led to dire consequences and the need for Cherie to seek treatment in Bangkok, Thailand… treatment that would have been much more successful had she not wasted precious time counting on regulators in her own country.