It
was a small victory in a grim, relentless, and runaway catastrophe. In July,
Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, both American medical workers in Liberia,
became stricken with Ebola hemorrhagic fever after treating dozens suffering
from the disease, which has a mortality rate of between 50 percent and 90
percent. They were rushed doses of an experimental cocktail of Ebola antibodies
called ZMapp, flown home via a Gulfstream III on separate flights on Aug. 2 and
5, and isolated inside a special tent called an “aeromedical biological
containment system.” The U.S. State Department and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) coordinated the flights, operated by Phoenix Air,
a private transport company based in Georgia. Cared for in a special ward at
Emory University in Atlanta, they recovered within the month and later met with
President Obama. It appeared a win for the White House.
Mapp
Biopharmaceutical, the San Diego company that developed ZMapp, is also in a way
a White House project. It’s supported exclusively through
