By now you’ve seen the video of Dr. Kent Bradley wearing a haz-mat suit, being walked into Emory in Atlanta for treatment of Ebola. He’s in amazingly good shape for such a debilitating, deadly disease. And that’s thanks, possibly, in part to a super-secret experimental drug that nobody knew existed. Well, somebody knew it existed, so why didn’t we?
To bring you up to speed, Charlotte’s Nancy Writebol is also headed to Emory. She’s the second aid worker, along with Dr. Brantley, to contract Ebola in Liberia. And she has also received the new drug which is credited with stabilizing her condition. But it’s not a cure, at least, not so far.
But what about this mysterious new drug that nobody seemed to know about until last week? It’s called M-zapp, made by a private drug development company in California. It’s never been used in humans before, but still, just days before it was given to Brantley and Writebol, a division of the U.S. military gave the company a huge new grant to continue development, which makes you think anti-germ warfare. But two days later, the FDA stepped in to cut off testing.
Of course, the U.S. has had plenty of criticism from inside: people complaining the drug approval process takes too long. For example, there’s no cure for aids or HIV in adults, and that’s been a huge problem. But then people like Magic Johnson are able to work around the medical system, finding ways to access experimental drug cocktails. And by “ways”, we mean “money.”
Of course, there’s no cure for cancer, and some might say there’s more money in treatments than cures. Throw in controversies like Lorenzo’s Oil and CDBs, and it might look like somebody is hiding something.
So our Man on the Edge, Robert Wilder, went to see if the government knows about cures they won’t tell us…
