Ebola Researchers Have A Radical Idea: Rush A Vaccine Into The Field
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Today, the World Health Organization concludes a two-day meeting to discuss a radical idea: bringing a vaccine into the field without having tested its effectiveness.
Traditional means of containing Ebola — such as isolating people who are infected with the disease and tracing the people they’ve come into contact with — aren’t working fast enough to get ahead of the epidemic. So the question is: Will giving an experimental vaccine to willing volunteers help contain the disease or put people at greater risk?
Dr. Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford, says the urgency of the Ebola situation has led to throwing traditional timelines “out the window.”
Hill says their vaccine could be ready to give to health care workers as early as late November. That would be an extremely fast pace compared with the typical timeline for developing a new vaccine.
Source: NPR (link opens in a new window)
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