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Asked by chriswarbey to Arthur, Clare, Daniel, David, Tora on 14 Nov 2014.
Question: Why is it taking so long to find a cure for Ebola?
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Clare Harding answered on 14 Nov 2014:
Today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-30033400) they are starting clinical trials for a cure for ebola which is a great thing to happen! Finding a drug for a disease usually takes at least 10 years so this has happened amazingly quickly even though it may not appear to be. Often, creating a new drug is the easy part, but testing to make sure that the drug is safe and effective takes years of very, very expensive trials.
It takes a long time but we don’t normally want to rush it. But in the case of ebola, the disease is so dangerous that even if the drug has some side effects, it is still better than nothing!
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Arthur Dyer answered on 14 Nov 2014:
We do have one drug which seems to work but it’s really really difficult to make and we’re still not sure if it even helps so people are also trying to make that as quickly as they can.
Everything is moving much quicker than it usually would as normally there’d be loads and loads of safety studies to make sure the drug wasn’t dangerous but in this case we need to try whatever we can really quickly
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Daniel Parsons answered on 14 Nov 2014:
Clare is right about the antiviral development – it takes a long time to develop them, but it looks like great progress for people that already have Ebola. In the longer term scientists are also working on a vaccine.. this stops you getting it in the first place – its a bit like the MMR injection you have as a baby that stops you getting measles, mumps and rubella – viruses that have been now largely stopped by development of a vaccine – the hope is one have we will have a vaccine for Ebola and other viruses like HIV.
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