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"“What they really didn’t want to do was kill Dr. Khan with their attempt at therapy,” said Dr. Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist at Doctors Without B

by Aqueous 12y ago

"“What they really didn’t want to do was kill Dr. Khan with their attempt at therapy,” said Dr. Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist at Doctors Without Borders. “If word got out that M.S.F. killed Dr. Khan, that would have implications for outbreak control,” he added, using the initials for the French name of the relief group." It is really difficult to challenge this line of reasoning from the sidelines. Doctors especially those directly involved in public health are forced to make utilitarian decisions like this all the time - weighing the greater good against the good of an individual. People on the ground in West Africa are much better equipped than any of us in the West in assessing the risk of such a rumor damaging outbreak control efforts. That said, it doesn't say whether they considered giving Dr. Khan the drug secretly. It seems like such a thing would be possible, and they could disclose that he had received the drug after the outbreak had started to slow down (which hopefully will happen soon).

ics 12y ago
> it doesn't say whether they considered giving Dr. Khan the drug secretly Sounds like an easy way to worsen the worst-case scenario by quite a bit.
einhverfr 12y ago
Also consider this: Ebola seems to have about a 60% mortality rate. This means that if he survives you can't credit the drug and since you don't know how effective it is, you can't blame death on it either. Not until you have more data. But this means the decision is political and rightly so. I don't know how I feel about foreign aid workers being the first to try the drug. On one hand they are politically safe. On the other hand, it looks like Western Privilege. These things have no good answers. Sometimes we are left choosing between bad possibilities.
- true_religion 12y ago
  Isn't a 60% mortality rate particularly high? And if you give someone a drug and they consequently show a reversal of their symptoms instead of a slow die off as immune response kicks in, doesn't that pretty heavily imply that the drug worked? I'm not against full clinical trials and the like, but I doubt that's a possibility with an epedemic like disease like ebola.
  - einhverfr 12y ago
    It's very high, but it is at a point where you cannot credit or blame the drug for success or failure in a specific case. You need aggregate data. The point is about the political vs the scientific perspective and that these are not aligned.

by Aqueous 12y ago

ics 12y ago

> it doesn't say whether they considered giving Dr. Khan the drug secretly Sounds like an easy way to worsen the worst-case scenario by quite a bit.

einhverfr 12y ago

Also consider this: Ebola seems to have about a 60% mortality rate. This means that if he survives you can't credit the drug and since you don't know how effective it is, you can't blame death on it either. Not until you have more data. But this means the decision is political and rightly so. I don't know how I feel about foreign aid workers being the first to try the drug. On one hand they are politically safe. On the other hand, it looks like Western Privilege. These things have no good answers. Sometimes we are left choosing between bad possibilities.

true_religion 12y ago
Isn't a 60% mortality rate particularly high? And if you give someone a drug and they consequently show a reversal of their symptoms instead of a slow die off as immune response kicks in, doesn't that pretty heavily imply that the drug worked? I'm not against full clinical trials and the like, but I doubt that's a possibility with an epedemic like disease like ebola.
- einhverfr 12y ago
  It's very high, but it is at a point where you cannot credit or blame the drug for success or failure in a specific case. You need aggregate data. The point is about the political vs the scientific perspective and that these are not aligned.