A drug maker courted controversy when it shut out a family-run rival. Now some patients say the medicine isn’t working

Over the past few months, about 30 people who suffer from Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, or LEMS, have switched back to the older treatment, known as Ruzurgi. For more than two decades, a small, family-run company called Jacobus Pharmaceuticals made its drug available on a compassionate use basis to a few hundred people while pursuing formal FDA approval.