Research during Ebola vaccine trial: It’s complicated
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/research-during-ebola-vaccine-trial-it-s-complicated
A long-running Ebola blood study in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that sets up makeshift labs in remote parts of the country will join the vaccine trial underway.
During an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus like the one underway in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), research necessarily takes a back seat to proven containment strategies, including isolation of infected people, identification and testing of their contacts, and safe burial of the dead. But the DRC has approved one vaccine trial, and a second study piggy backed on it to assess immune response to the vaccine, in the hope that the “experimental” intervention might help curb the outbreak and offer some insights for the future.