[Missouri gal]

RE: It is a destructive strain of HIV

Not even close. The guy is a quack. It would be great if he found something that slams this virus, but a tiny sample of 13 patients is meaningless.

[RinaseaofDs]

He’s a quack, except to say that 13 people who are alive that would not be.

[Black Agnes]

13 is greater than the number that received ZMapp.

And a close analogue of this compound has been shown to arrest ebola in the lab.

[The_Reader_David]

No, a tiny sample of 13 patients with zero fatalities from a disease that normally has a 68% mortality rate is not meaningless. For a disease with that mortality rate a double-blind controlled study comparing with a placebo would not only be unethical in terms of medical ethics, it would be flat immoral. So, let's use the general infected population with its 68% mortality rate as a control group. Zero fatalities in a sample of 13 shows an effect significant at the p < 0.0000003 level of significance in comparison to standard treatments.

When the effect is large enough it shows up in even small samples.

As for his off the cuff statement: lumping together all ssRNA viruses could be ignorance of virology, justifying your accusation of quackery, or just way of communicating to a popular audience, who wouldn't sit though an explanation of the niceties for viral classification, the basis for his, seemingly justified, confidence that a drug developed for HIV would work against Ebola.