US Officials: Global Crises Require Accelerated Drug Evaluation

With the world experiencing three major health crises in the past decade – severe acute respiratory syndrome, H1N1 pandemic influenza and Ebola – and the potential for other emerging diseases to turn into an epidemic, such as the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), there's a critical need for the rapid evaluation of experimental therapies, US officials said, laying out their argument in an Aug. 5 Perspectives article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The serious impact of these emergencies and the lack of effective therapies warrant moving forward with clinical testing as soon...