Renowned bioethicist, Arthur Caplan, discusses the distribution of limited experimental Ebola drugs

A day after the World Health Organization (WHO) ethics panel released their summary to consider and assess the ethical implications for clinical decision-making of the potential use of unregistered interventions for treating Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), and the Canadian government’s decision to donate up to 1,000 experimental vaccines to the WHO to distribute, one well-known bioethicist gave his thoughts on the matter in an NBC News Op-Ed. Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center inNew York City, Arthur Caplan, PhD answered the following questions concerning the Canadian vaccines–With such a limited supply, who should get them? And what do they need to be told? Caplan writes: “The most ethical way to distribute limited experimental vaccine, is, as the WHO ethics group noted, with an eye toward collecting information on safety and efficacy. Rather than just handing out vaccine...