Without those studies, how are we supposed to know if a drug or vaccine actually works? Just because a drug cures an animal of a disease does not mean it will do the same in humans. There are many drugs that work very well in rodents or monkeys that do nothing for humans.
There is a big problem in trying to test if Ebola drugs or vaccines work in humans. The problem is that we cannot expose people to Ebola to see if a drug or vaccine works. Politics and funding have nothing to do with this.
My supervisor thinks we should test these things on prisoners. I'm sure many people would agree with him. However, ethics committees (and probably laws) would prevent such testing.
As much as I would like to see a quick cure for ebola, I’m old enough to remember the thalidomide tragedies. Unfortunately, we have to take it slow and easy when developing new drugs………..
As long as a prisoner would allow pharmaceutical companies to test cures on them, that would bypass FDA human trials. I would have absolutely zero problem with it. In a controlled environment of course. With very little to no chance of any deadly germ spreading. There would be little problem with it from my point of view.
Lifers or death row inmates could do something productive to help other people. However, they should not be able to escape their sentence in doing so. A fair trade would be cushy medical facilities to spend their sentence in, and/or a nice check to the victims of said convict and possibly a check to said convicts family depending on the type and severity of crime. Many would die in the process, but the knowledge gained would be priceless. I’m thinking that this would be a grey area still, nonetheless. I have to think about this more.
Except when there are a pool of people, infected with Ebola, who face probable death, and who would likely jump at the chance to help with testing. All we would have to do is give the vaccine to one population and see if the death rate is much lower than the control population.
But since the majority of the potential testers are poor Africans, politics and "optics" become dominant.
Which studies proved that the polio vaccine worked?
Did they spend years on those studies before they rolled out the vaccine?
I won’t argue with you on the pharma stuff. However, the device side for detecting the virus should not be held up and in fact should be expedited as it demonstrates no direct risk to the patient.