The article that I have chosen focuses on the dilemma of wider production and the giving of Ebola victims untested drugs that may help them in subduing the Ebola virus. There have been many demands to provide wider access and supply of the untested medicines, namely ZMapp and a few others, as they appeared to hasten the recovery of two American aid workers infected with the disease. As such, the World Health Organization brought together an expert panel of medical ethicists to meet and afterwards come to a consensus, in which they will inform the World Health Organization the benefits as well as the drawbacks of their decision.
It has caused such a conundrum as even though we should aid the patients as soon as possible, we should not attempt to administrate untested medicines onto them, as it may pose a serious risk to their well-being. The main question at issue of this article is if the World Health Organization should administer untested medicines onto Ebola victims, even though it carries a high amount of risk due to it being unreliable. “We have a disease with a high fatality rate without any proven treatment or vaccine,” Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general, mentioned in a statement.
How would doctors keep track of every Ebola victim and record data on how the drugs perform? Also, should the untested medicine cause the victims health to deteriorate, what would be the repercussions that come along with it? Related issues at hand would be that there is a dilemma in choosing the people to obtain the extremely limited medication, as it would cause an uproar to pick one over the other. Also, could the money used for the production of these drugs be better utilised by spending it on quarantine supplies and public health education to reduce disease transmission?
The author has also used evidence to support his points that the lack of reliable medicine to administer to Ebola victims has driven many of them into a corner. He quotes his sources from the Guardian, which proves that his information is reliable and accurate. The evidence states that the US Centres for Disease Control responded to the Nigerian government’s plea for access to the drugs by saying that they had virtually no more ZMapp doses remaining.
As such, many other drug manufacturers, in an attempt of making money, have come forward to urge the use of their untested Ebola medications. “The problem is you have no idea whether the medication worked or didn’t work,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “You can’t know after treating only two people, with a disease like this.
” As Ebola is such a widespread disease in Africa, it is impossible to be able to determine the potency of the medicines after just a handful of test subjects have been experimented on. An implication that can surface from the issues mentioned in the article is Nigeria and other African countries plagued with Ebola facing the threat of anarchy. This is due to the extremely scarce supply of medicine to aid the people afflicted with Ebola. As such, many of them will be scrambling to obtain the medicine, effective or not.
This can result in the country being thrown into a state of panic, where all sense of decorum and law is discarded into the trashbin. Also, as the Ebola outbreak has especially affected the more rural parts of Africa, the people there have a higher chance of only possessing rudimentary knowledge in modern medicine. The article also mentions: “Do you think you can give informed consent, or are you likely to be coercive? How would I explain the risk of a brand-new drug to an African patient?
” As such, we can infer that different people judge a certain situation in different manners, with some wanting the untested drugs to be expedited, while others wanting to wait for reliable data to appear before making an informed decision. Therefore, in the best interests of everyone involved, should we take all necessary precautions before distributing the drugs to the Ebola patients, and not to rush things foolishly? Or should we take a leap of faith and attempt to heal the dying with untested medicines? -717 words.