
A Plan to Use Survivors’ Blood for Ebola Treatment in Africa - Mz
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/health/use-of-ebola-survivors-blood-as-possible-treatment-gains-support.html?ref=science
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oliwarner
No mention of HIV which is a fairly important factor, given some of these
countries' adult populations are up to 1% infected.

Would be horrible to replace something acute with something equally deadly
that just takes longer.

~~~
mikeash
It wouldn't be good, but if the choice is between Ebola and HIV, it's a
complete no-brainer. I'm sure that's true even in poorer countries where the
drugs are harder to come by.

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meowface
Yep, absolutely. HIV is not nearly as easy to (unintentionally) transmit, and
is much more manageable in the long term.

If I was on my death bed and was offered to take a potential treatment that
had a 1% chance of giving me HIV, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

~~~
KMag
Would this still be the case if monkey studies showed the treatment to be
worthless? It's one thing to give someone a treatment that is believed to be
effective that carries a 1% chance of HIV infection. It's completely another
thing to use a treatment that has had no controlled human studies against
Ebola and the one controlled monkey study didn't show any benefit against
Ebola, and carries a 1% chance of HIV infection.

Now, as mentioned in the article, the blood will be screened for a variety of
pathogens, including HIV, so the risk of HIV infection should be very low.

