Friday, December 12, 2014

The cure for ebola

Remember, you heard it here first, folks.  The cure for ebola is described in this paper, published in the World Journal of Critical Care Medicine last May.

So why hasn't anybody noticed?  Well, for starters, it's not just a cure for ebola, but a host of other conditions that kill a lot more people than ebola, including septic shock.  That puts is squarely in the too-good-to-be-true category that would make anyone hearing this news for the first time rightfully skeptical.  But I've looked into it, and it seems plausible.  The theory is that it is not the infections that do the damage, it's the metabolic by-products of your immune system fighting the infections, and specifically a buildup of hydrogen peroxide.  If you intervene to get rid of the peroxide then you can keep the patient alive long enough for the body to finish fighting off the infection.  And there is a drug already on the market that does exactly that, though it is currently used for a different purpose.  (I've been asked by Jay Pravda, the author of the paper not to reveal what this drug is.)

If anyone reading this happens to know someone doing field work with ebola victims in Africa and would be willing to put me in touch with them please drop me a line.  There's a fairly straightforward experiment that could be done to test Dr. Pravda's theory (check ebola victims for elevated levels of hydrogen peroxide in their bloodstreams) and I'd like to do what I can to get this experiment done sooner rather than later.  The situation is too urgent to just let the usual processes run their course.

4 comments:

Publius said...

Urgency is not a reason to dismiss, subvert, or otherwise bypass the usual processes. The best response to urgency is to expedite the usual processes - this ensures the results will be useful and believable.

Ron said...

And what makes you think I'm doing anything other than trying to expedite the usual process?

Publius said...

>The situation is too urgent to just let the usual processes run their course.

Ron said...

Ah. The operative word there was supposed to be "just". I guess I should have said something more like, "The situation is too urgent to merely sit back and let the usual processes run their course at their normal leisurely pace."