The New York Times on-line edition arrived with all the news that is fit to print. I read an article about an advance made in treating the Ebola virus, as the movie Aliens was on the tube.
I'll reprint parts of the article here, since you need to be registered to link there:
Federal scientists have developed a fast-acting, single-shot vaccine that makes monkeys immune to the Ebola virus six times as fast as an earlier version.
If the same approach works in humans, it could control or prevent outbreaks of the rare infection that causes high fever, severe pain, bleeding from the eyes and usually death within a few days.
***
Researchers tested the vaccine by giving eight macaque monkeys a single injection of a weakened virus modified with a protein from the Ebola virus. Twenty-eight days later, the monkeys were injected with an Ebola virus strain taken from a human who died from the disease in 1995. All eight monkeys remained healthy. All the monkeys in a separate control group that were not given the vaccine died after they were exposed to the virus.
Here's the hypothetical in medical ethics: The last outbreak of Ebola was in Africa, but I'm in Reston, Virginia, outside a commercial animal laboratory, when a monkey walks out the front door of the lab and bites me. The lab tech running after the monkey yells to me that the monkey is infected with Ebola virus.
You're the doctor who examines me, and you have access to the experimental vaccine. What do you do? What do you do?
Posted by Bill at August 8, 2003 04:20 AMParenting Ethics 101 - Don't embarrass the boy tonight or tomorrow... oh, and don't beat him TOO badly at golf. You don't want him making you do another round just to prove something!
You boys have somewhere to be... 'member!
Oh yeah, and enjoy this week-end!!!
-d
I would use the experimental vaccine. If you are infected with the virus you are going to die anyway. Prevention is better than cure - so scientists should work on vaccines to prevent us getting all these weird diseases - like our shots for measles and chicken pox when we are babies.
Posted by: Michelle at August 9, 2003 04:10 AMHAPPY WEDDING DAY!
-d