[x0x0]

The death rate from the current ebola is approximately 50%. While that sucks, what patients have to lose is both a 50% chance of living and their right not to be a playground for medical experimentation.

edit: and just who vets the people/companies who get to offer drugs to desperately ill people? Does anybody with $1k to buy needles get to make a sign and advertise curative injections? I'm sure glibertarian idiots will say it was a freely made choice, but choices made while infected with ebola (or even scared of being so infected) aren't freely taken, not to mention the asymmetric information.

[crusso]

glibertarian idiots

Please avoid making personal attacks like this on HN.

As a mostly libertarian-minded person myself, the height of compassion is to allow dying people to reach out for any hope out there.

Cruelty would be to prevent people from attempting to save their own lives "for their own good"; especially when no alternative cure is being offered by the politicians and bureaucrats making such life-impinging decisions.

Yes, the quacks and charlatans will try to take advantage and they should specifically be combatted. That doesn't mean that people should not be able to make decisions about their own lives.

[ekianjo]

> edit: and just who vets the people/companies who get to offer drugs to desperately ill people?

Look at the scientists who were helping fight Ebola in Africa. When they discovered they were infected as well they had the chance to take a new treatment and they took it. And they recovered.

The question of who decides is important, I'm not saying it should be overlooked but the possibility is not even there for those who actually want to take it desperately. And no need to throw the "libertarian" word for everything you disagree with, we are talking about having choice here.

[krschultz]

And some of the people that were given the experimental drug in Africa died as well. Correlation does not equal causation.

We all love silver bullets and magic serums, but the real answer here is to get the basics right. There are major improvements that can happen in sanitation, medical care, keeping quarantines effective, proper handling of the dead, etc. A lot of major epidemics were stopped in the 1800s and early 1900s with these kind of things, Ebola can be fought in many ways without inventing a drug.

Solving the crisis on a large scale isn't really a "medical" challenge in the normal sense, it is about logistics and resources and public trust in government & doctors.

[ekianjo]

I'm not saying it's a silver bullet, and I never implied causation either on n=2, while it may be that they recovered because of that. Don't change the discussion. My point is, if you are dying from Ebola and you'd like to test a last treatment before all bets are off, why not accept it ?

I think that if you were yourself in such a situation, with any incurable disease, you'd see the world in a different way. It's always easy to talk about things that do not concern oneself directly. And again, right NOW, Cancer patients have that choice, so why not others?

[JoeAltmaier]

Its historically been where lots of abuse happened - quacks offering miracles; legitimate researchers overstating the hope and downplaying the suffering involved in 'new' treatments. So there's a lot of rules in place.

[ekianjo]

> So there's a lot of rules in place.

I'm not sure if you are aware but in Africa right now people infected are actually going to see the quacks and shamans because they have no other option. Maybe it's time to think about providing them with something that has more scientific ground to actually work.

[JoeAltmaier]

I'm not sure there are anything but shamans there - once I heard of the doctor that hid his infection and exposed 200+ other people, I have lost all faith in local doctors to accomplish anything.

Exotic cures are sure exciting to talk about. But for a disease that can be stopped cold in its tracks by washing hands and effective quarantine, they're having a bucket of trouble accomplishing anything. Maybe its a little blue-sky to be adding complex drug protocols to the plan.

[DanBC]

People are also taking relatives from clean hospitals because they don't trust those workers.