The new U.S.commitment to Ebola and the ecology of fear

The Ebola news this past week includes the announcement by President Obama that the U.S. will provide troops, engineers to build new treatment centers and training for healthcare workers

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/world/africa/obama-to-announce-expanded-effort-against-ebola.html?_r=0.

As these efforts progress, two essays remind us  1) of the historical ecology of fear associated with our involvement with disease in Africa http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1411244?query=TOC and 2) the need to do solid science and perform ethical field clinical studies http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1409817?query=TOC.

Problems associated with drug therapy in senior citizens.

In class, we will be discussing how different population groups respond to drugs.  In this article, the impact of over medicating senior citizens with dementia is described http://www.scpr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/09/17271/advanced-dementia-patients-often-prescribed-unnece/.  This second article reports on use of drugs in pilots (many who are older) who were involved in fatal crashes http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/us/pilot-drug-use-plane-crashes.html

Update on drugs being developed to treat Ebola

This article gives a very nice overview on where we currently are with respect to developing drugs to be used for treating Ebola http://www.ddn-news.com/index.php?newsarticle=8771&