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writing for godot

US Could Have a Heroic not Selfish Role in the Ebola Fight

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Written by Richard Kane   
Tuesday, 26 August 2014 12:49
Standards of medical research kept getting higher, until the Ebola epidemic hit. Horror stories abound. Suddenly fairness is out the window. The US is reserving the latest experimental care for American citizens who contracted Ebola in Africa, and so does Britain with its citizens. Americans and a British nurse were brought home to intensive care facilities and survived. Sierra Leone had a hero doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who was denied the lifesaving new drug, one dose was already on hand locally. Before tackling Ebola Dr. Khan managed to save hundreds of lives fighting Lassa Fever. He is loved the way Mother Teresa is elsewhere,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/24/health-ebola-khan-idUSL5N0QS2TZ20140824

His relatives, especially his Western educated brother Amadu Khan, complained that he did not receive the life saving treatment that the Americans and British nurse got.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-neighbours-rally-to-support-brother-of-tragic-ebola-crusader-30489329.html

The worst horror is West Point, Monrovia, in Liberia a slum fenced off without food and water under armed guard. Now other areas of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone have been put under quarantine. Why the lack of worldwide public complaints against this injustice? Of course things could be worse. Adolf Hitler and infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele were proud of their coldblooded research and practices. Back when the US was trying to find a cure for syphilis, no one bothered to give the new, lifesaving drug to poor, black syphilis patients who were part of the control group after the new drug cure was proven effective.

A high point in the US effort to find cures and fight dangerous diseases is remembered as Walter Reed who proved mosquitoes spread Yellow Fever not polluted water volunteering to be placed in a room with mosquitoes. However this history is wrong. He did volunteer but left the Panama Canal building area before the test was conducted. His assistant Dr. Jesse William Lazear purposely submitted to mosquitoes bites and died from Yellow Fever as did several other coworkers with Walter Reed,
http://m.learningenglish.voanews.com/a/six-researchers-who-gave-all-to-their-work-150473515/608889.html

I have a suggestion to introduce the same kind of idealism in today's Ebola fight as the US medical personnel once had in the Yellow Fever fight. Volunteers who were cured of Ebola need to work behind the lines without having to take precautions against infection. We do not know if being cured of Ebola offers permanent protection or only temporary partial protection where getting it again would be less severe than the first time one catches it. The US and Britain can claim to be helping Ebola victims with special care who will be going back to do this needed effort making sure some of those brought to the US for intense treatment were locals who went out of their way to volunteer in the fight against Ebola like Dr. Kahn did.

I urge US doctor Kent Brantly, and US nurse Nancy Writebol, and British nurse William Pooley, to offer to volunteer to go back to fighting Ebola but behind the wall of protection as Dr. Sheik Umar Khan and Mother Teresa would have done. The good news so-far is that Nancy Writebol and William Pooley are talking about going back,
http://www.people.com/article/ebola-survivor-nancy-writebol-considers-returning-to-Africa
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2734220/My-happiness-helping-save-ebola-patients-hero-nurse-Days-later-fighting-life-disease-struck.html

The perception that the medical personnel who are going to be working behind the lines if they get cured are getting special treatment would improve the moral climate and reduce the panic.

In hot, damp Africa all the protective clothing is extremely hot and uncomfortable and cleaning all the protective clothing after it is taken off a huge chore. People available who can stay inside the quarantine area for days at a time would make treating Ebola far easier and a Mother Teresa type hug for an Ebola patient at times would be very uplifting.


Beyond the scope of this article there is a 2010 article about natural immunity to Ebola that as far as I can tell has not being newly reviewed,
http://en.ird.fr/the-media-centre/scientific-newssheets/337-possible-natural-immunity-to-ebola

Also beyond the scope of this article. In some neighborhoods in Africa people cured of Ebola are shunned to the point where cured Ebola patients have difficultly even being able to buy food. They could be rescued to work on the Ebola epidemic in a more low key way then would people like Nancy Whitebol and William Pooley if I can contact them might work behind the quarantine lines.

The attitude of Médecins Sans Frontières, or in English referred to as Doctors Without Borders, surprises me. Why would a French organization get at least indirectly involved in getting sick Americans and Brits home but not French nationals unless no one from France caught Ebola? Also, where are the screams against areas being just fenced in?

Let us ordinary people remember and clamor to repeat the high standards that the fellow medical personnel on the same team with Dr. Walter Reed once exhibited, and speak out against the horror of fenced-in areas with the people inside being left to die.



Richard Kane also wrote on the way, "Hitler's Super-drug to make superman more super"(Methamphetamine) contributed to the horrors of the Holocaust,
http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/94-94/18822-ancient-rome-with-mass-lead-poisoning-meth-and-hitlers-super-drug-to-make-supermen-more-super
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