Comment by monsterix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by monsterix | Hacker News Reader

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Hm. I agree that it'd be hard for anyone to decide on a thing that affects public perception in Africa. And in that pressure, I believe, probably the worst decision was taken in the case of Dr. Khan.

If they had tried the third vial (extra bottle) of drug on Dr. Khan, and so close he was to the medicines!, and had he survived (given that others did) the public perception would have certainly changed. Don't you think?

SIDENOTE to downvoters:

Very interesting behavior of what I believe is a small set of users on HN.

I know Steuard, above, had not down-voted my parent comment on the top until about an hour ago. And then came a sudden barrage of negative votes from a few users.

It'd be really interesting to find out the correlation between the users who down-voted and the color of their skin. I am pretty sure about the outcome.

Also I have a strong feeling (could be unfounded though) that the committee that withdrew the drug from Dr. Khan in Africa had racial bias too. And that they took the most selfish option available at the time - without caring much about a precious human life or public perception both.

Most of the pointers indicate that the names of those individuals should come out in public, and their reasoning be brought out too.

We had a similar situation earlier where the potentially nasty hid behind a committee / organizational name - remember? - when Aaron Swartz happened and the people in the bureaucracy had to be called out.

>>It'd be really interesting to find out the correlation between the users who down-voted and the color of their skin. I am pretty sure about the outcome.

I downvoted you and I'm first-gen Nigerian in America. Just about everyone else is in Lagos. I feel very confident, at least as far as educated Nigeria is concerned, that most suspect Africans-used-as-experiments more than withholding-for-white-man.

Not giving Dr.Khan the medicine was the right thing to do.

Having a few people like you talking about withholding-conspiracies that don't really make sense... is better than giving him the untested drug, ends up not working(maybe producing horrible side-effects) and the general public freaks out even more and trusts all the doctors even less than they already do.

> Not giving Dr.Khan the medicine was the right thing to do.

Sure. How did you know it was the right thing to do?

Because giving a medicine, untested on humans, to an African during this time of panic and mistrust(justified, to be sure) is a ridiculous risk.

Role a dice to see if you can save Dr.Khan.

- If it works[<50%], awesome he lives and they get to work on making more of the stuff while trying to contain it.

- If doesn't work[>50%], the already deep mistrust and panic of the people will increase and everyone freaks out. If later they actually do find a cure, who's going to believe them?

- Third option. Test it on someone who isn't African so whatever the results are, you don't have a PR disaster & mass-panic on your hands.

It is absurd and conspiratorial to think that someone would volunteer or work with MSF at great personal cost and risk and then do something so terrible because of racism.

Had you tried to research it, you might have found some of your answer articles like http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/dying-sierra-leone-dr-sheik-um... that talk about some of the details behind the decision.

You make a really vile accusation with very poor reasoning against people doing very good, noble work (and calling for them to be named publicly). I didn't downvote you, but I don't have any sympathy.

It is rather more absurd to withhold the medicine from a dying patient simply to manage "public perception" sir. You can go ahead and give a negative vote too, it wouldn't mean a thing.

Yes, people are doing very good, noble work -- Dr Khan was one of them too -- I seek to know the thoughts and names of those who chose to withhold the medicine from him, and give it to others the very next day.

The world should know. And thanks for the article, I did read it before and therefore, I ask for reasons that led to their unfortunate decision.

"It is rather more absurd to withhold the medicine from a dying patient simply to manage "public perception" sir."

That would be awful it it were true. Why do you think that is the case? Neither the submitted article, my Lancet link, nor my CBC link contain those words. However, the CBC article notes:

"The drug had never been tested on humans. What if it caused an allergic reaction that killed Dr. Khan?"

"His blood showed antibodies to the virus, evidence that his own immune system was already in full battle. What if the drug got in the way of that immune response?"

"...the final decision was left with the doctors at the field hospital in Sierra Leone, although it was not a unanimous decision."

Friend of Dr Khan talking about the decision, "I do want it to be clear that these were difficult, delicate decisions that people in a stressful situation had to make."

"The treatment, it was felt, if it was to be used at all, would be better attempted at the more sophisticated hospital in Europe where Dr. Khan was about to be moved."

"A Spanish priest who also received the experimental treatment later died."

All of these undercut your accusations completely.

"His blood showed antibodies to the virus"

Given that Zmapp is three "humanized monoclonal antibodies" to Ebola and from memory is therefore intended for early stage disease, giving it to someone who's had Ebola long enough that they're already producing normal antibodies could be pointless, except in terms of Stage I trials (the ones where you test a drug primarily to see if it's safe, and also look for evidence of efficacy).

It could be that most or all of the 7 people given it were at this point, and the testing was really just for safety. In which case we eeeevil white men are obviously going to first test it on ourselves for the political reasons you and others point out. 3 Liberians were given it later.

Just like the vaccine that's in Stage I trials is being first tried on Americans, with a second effort on "60 healthy volunteers at the University of Oxford in England and among 40 healthy volunteers in Mali" and then an expected "40 healthy volunteers in Gambia". (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Pages/EbolaV...)

Important note: no matter how dire this Ebola outbreak gets, we still have to be very careful in vaccine trials, which are given to ostensibly healthy people. You don't, for an extreme, and unlikely given the current state of the art hypothetical, want to find out that it kills 99% of those given it 2 years later. Aside from the universally fatal stuff like rabies there can be worse outcomes than getting the disease.

> That would be awful it it were true.

I totally agree with you.

My intent to know the context of discussions, people and debate that went on for three days while Dr. Khan's health degraded was simply this: Could groupthink have been responsible for the outcome and been avoided? If so, can it be done in the future?

If you look at my original comments closely, I only complained about racially driven down-votes from some users on HN and shared my fears about a similarly driven group-think that might / might not have happened in Africa. Since there is no data on that, it should be outed.

I will not myself be excusable if I were to really accuse someone (or a group) simply by their color, especially after reading some article on HN.

All I seek is the details or think that led to the unfortunate decision. I can form my opinion off it.

you have pretty clearly formed (and expressed) your opinion already.

So have you.

Besides if you're hiding the reasons and the team that led to the death of someone of another color it could of course be for noble reasons. Nice sell. And just look at the number of down-votes, lame comments and attempt to cull the discussion. HN at its very best. And it's fucking racist to the core.

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