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Leaked Documents Reveal Behind-the-Scenes Ebola Vaccine Issues
sciencehabit writes Extensive background documents from a meeting that took place today at the World Health Organization (WHO) have provided new details about exactly what it will take to test, produce, and bankroll Ebola vaccines, which could be a potential game changer in the epidemic. ScienceInsider obtained materials that vaccinemakers, governments, and WHO provided to the 100 or so participants at a meeting on 'access and financing' of Ebola vaccines. The documents put hard numbers on what until now have been somewhat fuzzy academic discussions. And they make clear to the attendees—who include representatives from governments, industry, philanthropies, and nongovernmental organizations—that although testing and production are moving forward at record speed, knotty issues remain.
$151M or $337M is not such a large sum of money that the US, UK, or French government couldn't unilaterally pick it up. The issue is with the politics. Voters and politicians in a single country are more okay with joining an international effort than seeing that they're the only ones footing a big bill.
In this regard, the UK's strategy shows a lot of leadership combined with practical politics:
"As far as financing, the U.K. government contends that a “multi-donor club” should pay for the vaccine development in “the medium term.” But for now, the United Kingdom says it will “unilaterally” cover the costs for purchasing vaccines in Sierra Leone, and it asks the governments of the United States and France to make the same commitment for Liberia and Guinea, respectively."
It's a good play that let's the more xenophobic groups feel that the UK isn't propping up the whole world, but also allows hawks to see this as the UK exercising leadership/dominance internationally.
That's what you do if you already have a proven vaccine, yes.
But if you gave a hypothetical ebola vaccine to all 100-odd people in the US who'd plausibly been exposed by Duncan, you'd conclude it was 98% effective because only 2 infections resulted. Except you could've given them sugar pills and saline injections to the exact same effect.
Doing this doesn't tell you what trials need to tell you: "Does this vaccine/treatment have partial or complete preventative/curative powers without unreasonable side effects?" It's such a sticky ethical issue because performing such a test requires that you know if person X got the real thing or not, which (in the case of ebola) requires that you sentence those you know didn't get it to probably die.