Ethics of trial drug use: to give or not to give?

Abstract

The 2014 outbreak of Ebola viral disease in some West African countries, which later spread to the USA and Spain, has continued to be a subject of global public health debate. While there is no approved vaccine or drug for Ebola cure yet, moral questions of bioethical significance are emerging even as vaccine studies are at different clinical trial phases. This paper, through a normative and critical approach, focuses on the question of whether it is ethical to give any experimental drugs to Ebola victims in West Africa or not. Given the global panic and deadly contagious nature of Ebola, this paper argues on three major compassionate grounds that it is ethical to use experimental drugs on the dying African victims of Ebola. Besides respecting patients and family consent in the intervention process, this paper argues that the use of Ebola trial drugs on West African population will be ethical if it promotes the common good, and does not violate the fundamental principles of transparency and integrity in human research ethics. Using Kantian ethical framework of universality as a basis for moral defense of allowing access to yet approved drugs. This paper provides argument to strengthen the compassionate ground provisional recommendation of the WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) on Ebola vaccines and vaccination.