As West Africa experiences the largest and most severe outbreak of Ebola virus disease in history, the World Health Organization convened a panel of ethics experts to weigh some of the complex questions around access to treatment. The group reached consensus: it is ethical to offer “unproven interventions,” even if effectiveness or complications are unknown.
An experimental serum called ZMapp, never tested on humans, initially was given to two stricken American aid workers and later to a Spanish priest (who died), while hundreds of victims in Africa have gone untreated. The issue of whether medicine untested on humans
should be used on people—and if so, who should get it—is just one of many ethical questions stirred by the Ebola crisis.
George Annas, a renowned ethicist and the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and chair of the department of health law, bioethics, and human rights at the School of Public Health and a professor at the Schools of Medicine and Law, sees the hype over drug availability as expected, but misplaced. He offers his thoughts on ethical considerations: