ANDRZEJ KRAUZERecent days and weeks have brought ever-more-alarming reports of Ebola’s march across West Africa. The highly fatal viral disease now has all the hallmarks of an epidemic that is spinning out of control: most of its victims live in poor, rural areas with inadequate health-care systems and tend to be suspicious of hospital personnel and ignorant of how the disease is spread; there is currently no treatment other than strict quarantine and palliative measures, both of which are usually ineffective because they are often applied too late.
In response to the epidemic’s mounting death toll, vaccine research in the U.S. has kicked into high gear, and several small pharmaceutical companies with not-yet-approved strategies for attacking Ebola are finding themselves in the spotlight, not just for the potential of their barely tested treatments, but for the ethical implications of using them at such an early stage. Two infected American health-care volunteers received an experimental treatment developed by San Diego–based Mapp Biopharmaceutical. The drug, which had never before been given to humans, comprises several monoclonal antibodies directed against viral capsid proteins.
Another drug aimed at Ebola uses RNA interference (RNAi), a gene-silencing method discovered 16 years ago that happens to be the subject of “The Second Coming of RNAi.” Science writer Eric Bender describes ...
