The World Health Organization said Wednesday that it would convene a group of medical ethicists early next week to wrestle with questions about the use of experimental treatments in the deepening Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Currently, no approved treatment or vaccine exists to treat the devastating disease, which kills 60 to 90 percent of patients who contract it. There are a handful of promising treatments under development, but none have been tested on humans. The issue has gained widespread attention in recent days after two U.S. missionaries who were infected with Ebola while treating patients in Liberia received doses of an experimental serum known as ZMapp, which contains a cocktail of antibodies meant to fight off the disease.
