Ebola, Ethics, and Public Health: What Next?

Ebola virus disease has ignited some of our worst fears ina globalized world. The disease spreads quickly, with high mortality, and is crossing borders. More than half of infected persons have died (1). The confirmed cases in-clude 2 Americans who have become the focus of public attention because of their heroism and for the extraordi-nary measures taken to ensure that they received optimum medical care. With this attention, 3 ethics questions are being asked: Should the 2 Americans have been airlifted out of Liberia when others were not? Should they have been given a highly experimental treatment? And if treating them was appropriate, should the hundreds of Africans with Ebola also be treated? Despite codes of ethics requiring physicians not to abandon sick patients (2), few health professionals woul