In all the Ebola discourse, I'm not sure i've seen it properly articulated the disadvantages of rushing new drugs to market without rigorous clinical trials, so here goes:

Those that clamour for the new Ebola treatments need to understand the following:

1. Medicine and pharmaceuticals unfortunately are not black and white, there are a million and one shades of grey.

2. Diseases hardly ever kill 100% of people. People can survive heart attacks, strokes and cancers without treatment. Even the dreaded Ebola currently has a fatality rate around 60%. Meaning 40% of infected people survive

3. The obvious next question is how is it that 40% can survive such a deadly infection? Answer is simple, our bodies have huge capacity to fight off disease, heal and preserve itself. Were it not so, the human race would have been history by now

4. When a new drug is introduced, for it to be seen as effective it has to do better than just the body's own defence system
In the case of Ebola, it must be better than the 40% that is being quoted, otherwise our own system is better than the drug or in other words, the drug actually kills more people compared to our system.

5. How the above is done is through a properly designed drug trial. An important feature of this trial must be a large number of people using the drug compared to similar numbers not using the drug. Why? We all know the chance of getting 'heads' when you toss a coin in the air is 50%, however it is possible to have 'heads' the first 3 times you toss the coin. If you only stop there a 2 sided coin magically becomes a 1 sided coin.

6. So why don't we just give the drug anyway, what's the worst that could happen? Well one could die. Remember the volunteers that were hospitalised after TGN1412 was given to them in London. Closer to home, Pfizer trialled Trovan in a meningitis outbreak in Kano to disastrous outcomes. Eventually having to pay the Kano state government 75 million dollars in compensation (wonder whatever happened to the money...). Many more instances abound of treatments that were thought to be great but turned sour - Tamiflu, Raboxetine, Thalidomide

7. The greater issue particularly with this current outbreak is that we could be directing our attention and resources away from the supportive treatments that are known to help to experimental ones that no one is really sure about

8. Finally if i were to catch Ebola i would probably ask them to keep their Zmapp, instead give me plenty of fluids, oxygen and blood products as i need it, do my blood tests twice daily and correct whatever abnormalities are found. That is what we should be focusing on not expensive magical treatments that are probably no better than salt water, bitter kola or the incantations of a babalawo (the logic above applies to their successes too).

P.S - Remember that that the companies that sell these treatments are not charities, they have a vested interest in their success. Tekmira, a pharmaceutical company who have a treatment of their own saw their shares climb with this outbreak but had their proposed human trial stopped due to safety concerns. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101892335#