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A comment on Ebola: Experimental drug ZMapp is '100% effective' in animal trials. Parent comment

Re:Ebola: Experimental drug ZMapp is '100% effective' in ani... by skosch on Friday August 29, 2014 @03:15PM (#8244070)
I would hazard a guess that we know Ebola to be pretty close to 100% lethal, and if you know that three out of three control animals died, then the virus is "working" and there's no need to sacrifice many more animals.
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Re:Ebola: Experimental drug ZMapp is '100% effective' in ani... by hga on Friday August 29, 2014 @08:06PM (#8245093)
Exactly. The control group is there to, for example, make sure your culture of Ebola is really that, viable and so on. If they didn't get sick, let alone die, you'd know your experimental group results were invalid.

Monkeys are also very expensive animals to do research on, and no one likes to kill them, or at least we don't tend to have the same sentiments about mice and rats.

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