Medical Experts Look For New Ways To Test Ebola Drugs

NPR                                             Nov. 11, 2014
By Richard Harris

Medical experts are meeting today and tomorrow at the World Health Organization in Geneva to figure out how to test potential Ebola drugs in Africa. In addition to determining which experimental drugs should be the highest priority, the experts are sorting through some difficult ethical issues.

In short, they're trying to figure out how to design tests that will provide the fastest and most trustworthy answers — and yet minimize the need for comparison groups who won't be offered the experimental treatments.

Practice in the United States has set an unrealistic standard. When American health care workers fell ill with Ebola in Africa, they flew home and received medical care vastly better than what Africans were getting, including experimental therapies.

"We still have no idea whether those treatments made any difference in their recovery," says Nancy Kass, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University. The patients "also got exquisitely high-quality supportive care, which undoubtedly made a huge difference."

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/11/363054794/medical-experts-look-for-new-ways-to-test-ebola-drugs