New Ebola Drug 100 Percent Effective In Monkeys

The Ebola virus first emerged in 1976, striking fear with the uncontrollable bleeding it causes and mortality rates up to 90 percent. Ever since then, scientists have been struggling to find a way to treat the infection or protect against it. A team led by Thomas Geisbert of Boston University has used an experimental drug to protect monkeys from death after injecting them with massive doses of the most lethal strain of Ebola. We were stunned, Geisbert says. I’ve been working with this virus for my whole career — 23 or 24 years — and we’ve had some mild successes where maybe we could go up to 50 percent protection, he said. But I was really shocked that we got complete protection