It's easy to say "it worked! We cannot justify to not help those people who will die anyway", but there is NO guarantee that it will work a third time. It could dissolve the organs of the next person. And then it wouldn't sound so great anymore, would it?
Even if it dissolved the organs of the next 2 people it'd still be a better survival rate than Ebola itself (I understand this strain has a 60% mortality rate, not 90%), so yes, it would still be great.
Either way, this is a choice that the patient should make for themselves. It may be ethically dubious to offer experimental drugs to dying patients, but it is obviously and completely morally and ethically reprehensible to deny a possible cure to someone who is dying and wants to give the cure a try.
This is a poorly considered view of experimental treatments. Particularly in the case of aid work, experimentation on the patient population is not only unethical in every formalizable sense, it is quite likely to inculcate a sense of distrust in the treated (justifiably, and moreso if there are unanticipated side effects), making treatment and control of future outbreaks more difficult. A chance at life for a single patient may damage the chance for hundreds if not thousands of future patients.
I'm not advocating experimentation on the patient population. I'm just saying it is frankly unethical and immoral to withhold a potential cure from a patient with a very high chance of dying, when you have that potential cure at hand and they are making an informed choice that they want to give it a try.
I don't see how treating that one patient will prevent "treatment and control of future outbreaks", either.
Even if it dissolved the organs of the next 2 people it'd still be a better survival rate than Ebola itself (I understand this strain has a 60% mortality rate, not 90%), so yes, it would still be great.
Either way, this is a choice that the patient should make for themselves. It may be ethically dubious to offer experimental drugs to dying patients, but it is obviously and completely morally and ethically reprehensible to deny a possible cure to someone who is dying and wants to give the cure a try.