Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa: ''totally out of control"

My Bad .. . . but i did quote them . . wasn't claiming them or nuffin

Rocket River
but i did bring them to the CF

 

Really not a big deal, I promise. :grin:

 

Here is another article no one on clutchfans wrote:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...014-shows-worlds-inequality-disease-treatment

 

The flipside of this:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-did-americans-get-the-drugs


You ask: "So how are we only hearing about this treatment when two American aid workers came down with the disease after going on 800 people have died in the current outbreak in three countries in Africa?"

I don't know anything about this particular case, but I do do bioethics, so: It's hard to overstate how unusual it is for a drug at this stage of development to be given to humans. This CNN piece suggests that they've only tried it on eight macaques so far. That's a small number; they'd normally do significantly more testing in primates (or some other good animal model) before moving on to humans. Then when they did move to humans, they'd begin by testing for safety, then do various complicated further tests on larger numbers of people, and only then, if it had proved to be safe and effective, would they be able to apply for FDA approval.

This means, first, that this probably wouldn't have been considered a "treatment" yet, just a promising lead. But second: trying a drug at this stage on humans has serious ethical risks. You'd want to be really, really sure that the people in question had given informed consent, and that that informed consent included their being absolutely clear that this drug not only might not work, but that it might actually be harmful to them. You'd want to be sure that they understood what it means for a drug to be at this preliminary stage of testing, and that they fully appreciated the fact that they were taking a huge gamble. (No, this procedure was not designed with something as nightmarish as Ebola in mind, something that makes statements like 'you know, you're assuming a real risk here' sound silly, but still. It was a real risk. Ebola is not 100% lethal; it's quite possible that an untested treatment could kill someone who would otherwise have recovered.) I think that this (along with the fact that the drug seems to require careful handling of the sort that would best be provided in a serious hospital, and the fact that there seems to have been only a limited amount of the drug available) would argue strongly in favor of trying the drug first on doctors, and specifically doctors who understand how much of the normal testing process was being bypassed, and what that meant.

As for why American doctors: here I am really speculating, but: I have read the same articles you probably have about the levels of distrust in the affected countries. I cannot imagine what it would be like things went badly wrong and Westerners were seen to be killing e.g. Liberians. Especially if the US government was (as the reporting suggests) involved in getting the drug to them.

Views about medical research seem to oscillate between thinking of research as risks inflicted on human guinea pigs and thinking of it as offering desperate people a chance at a cure, a chance which is held up by annoying research protocols and red tape. (On the one hand, Tuskegee; on the other, experimental HIV treatments.) The problem is that ex ante you just don't know which drugs will work, which will not, and which will have awful unforeseen effects. There have been a number of very serious criticisms of drug companies doing research on people in developing countries, especially when that research bypasses (or is thought to bypass) the kinds of controls we'd insist on in this country. (See, e.g., this.) It would surprise me if that hadn't played some role here.

There is a 40% survival rate thus far in this strain of Ebola. If this drug was tested on a bunch of Africans that might not be educated or informed on the risks and they all died, there would be hell to pay. It makes a lot of sense to test this (a) in a controlled environment and (b) on people (doctors) who truly understand the risks involved. This is the standard thing you run into with compassionate use decisions, except even more extreme since this thing is way earlier in the development/testing cycle.

 

very sad

esp the part about the Convalescent therapy,

Rocket River

 

This article seems relevant here:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/06/health/ebola-epidemic-fears/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

To me in some ways is sadder then the Isreali and Palestine conflict going. Those are two groups of inherently it seems violent people.

Where as these people are suffering and scared. And some of them don't even understand what is going on, meaning they think they are being cursed by witches or demons. In addition to the lack of medical care it I'm sure is an extremely desperate situation. And then to add the people that are going over there to put their lives on the line to help them.

 

Updates today.

A nurse who treated the American flyer in Nigeria has died from ebola. There are now five confirmed cases for healthcare workers who treated that guy. It really does make you wonder about exposure on the plane, since he became violently ill during the flight.

Good info here:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/06/ebola-nigeria-saudi-arabia-virus-death-toll/13663973/

CDC is going to take a more active roll in Nigeria now.

 

quite controversial, but I do agree on the part that we should just stick with taking care of our people in this country first.

http://www.thewrap.com/ann-coulter-...-cant-anyone-serve-christ-in-america-anymore/

 

i can agree with the government needing to worry about this country first, including the schools and infrastructure etc.

but if a dr wants to go help people, he can do that wherever he wants.

and a side note ~ ann c. has to been one of the most *****ed people to ever walk this earth.

 

Welp, I guess building an ebola treatment center in the center of a slum of uneducated people who think ebola is a hoax... was a bad idea.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28827091

This is bad news for containing the virus. After a mob overran the facility, 10 patients were taken home by their families, and 17 patients are "missing," according to a reporter on the scene. Looters took all sorts of stuff from the facility, including blood-stained mattresses. Genius.

 

Didn't they send the stuff that helped the Americans over there

Rocket River

 

It's airborne in monkeys now?? Sweet mother of God.

 

Airborne in monkeys.

 

Just napalm the whole area and pay the consequences later.

 

Viruses are nature's population control. If viruses ceased to exist, the only land animals would be insects. Thank the God I don't believe in for viruses. Smallpox killed 300-500 million people in the 20th century. We finally eradicated it in the late 1970s. Now look at us, the population has blown up.

The planet is better off without people anyway. Killing off a few billion people is not going to hurt a damned thing that really matters. The economy doesn't matter if we don't have a usable planet. Truth hurts.

 

While you're pretty dark in attitude, I can't disagree with the basics: we're overpopulating the planet, for one, and this will make us much more susceptible to outbreaks, for another. Nature will calibrate us eventually.

By the way, everyone, if you keep track of the CDC updates like I do, you'll see that they have ramped up warning US healthcare workers for how to identify, treat and dispose of hazardous ebola waste. The outbreak is bad enough that it will get here, at least in some limited form. I don't think it will spread here like it does in west Africa. Let's all pray it doesn't mutate. Christ, what a nightmare airborne would be.

Of course, it can always mutate to become less deadly, which is also probable (in that this would help it spread).