On Thursday Brantly was given a shot at survival: a 14-year-old male Ebola patient who had been under Brantly’s care, and survived, donated a “unit of blood” to Brantly, according to Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham. “The young boy and his family wanted to be able to help the doctor that saved his life.”

The idea—novel, though not unprecedented—is that the blood (plasma, in medical parlance) of a survivor, full of antibodies proven to be strong enough to fight off the disease (i.e., immune), when transfused into an infected body, might help that body become immune itself. Though it sounds a bit like something Hollywood might have cooked up, there’s some science behind it—and an historical precedent that offers hope.

[In a 1996 ebola epidemic] a nurse at Kikwit General Hospital, who had volunteered to care for a pair of Ebola-infected Italian nuns, developed symptoms of Ebola.

...Some of the medical professionals there who had suffered through and survived an earlier infection wanted to donate some of their blood to the nurse. “The Americans and Scientists from the States didnt believe it could work,” ... but the Congolese doctors did it anyway. The same blood transfusion procedure was repeated for seven others who were ill, the final group of Ebola-stricken patients in the hospital.

The results were staggering: seven of the eight survived.

So, why hasn’t the CDC, the WHO and the rest of the public health organizations worldwide jumped all over immune plasma infusion for Ebola? Why are we still scrambling for an Ebola treatment 20 years later? The answer is that it has been essentially impossible to test. Why? Because Ebola only pops up occasionally, infects a relative few, and kills most.

Labels: Ethics

¶ 2:15 AM