WIKIMEDIA, PLOS BIOLOGYThe World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday (August 6) announced it is convening a panel of ethicists “to explore the use of experimental treatment in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa.”
“We are in an unusual situation in this outbreak. We have a disease with a high fatality rate without any proven treatment or vaccine,” Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general at the WHO, said in a statement. “We need to ask the medical ethicists to give us guidance on what the responsible thing to do is.”
The recent administration of an experimental serum to two American healthcare workers who contracted Ebola in Liberia has sparked some outcry, and raised questions of whether and how soon the unapproved drug, which has not been through clinical trials, would be shipped to the center of the outbreak. The serum, Mapp Biopharmaceutical’s ZMapp, is currently only available in limited quantities. Charles Arntzen from Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, who has collaborated ...
