Announce Ebola cure and go to jail - FDA warns

The very act of suggesting or announcing a potential cure for the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, has become riskier than envisaged as claimants of such unverified and “unorthodox” cures now stand the risk of going to prison if threats by the American Food and Drug Administration, FDA, are anything to go by.

EVD, a deadly and currently incurable disorder that has killed over 3,000 persons in West Africa since the beginning of the year, is currently in the global spotlight as local and foreign scientists and researchers as well as top pharmaceutical companies and organisations join the race to find a lasting cure to the pestilence.

But for the World Health Organisation, WHO, Centres for Diseases Control, CDC and other global health bodies there is currently remains no cure for EVD.

From bitter kola to salt water solution and Ewedu among others, the practice of unsupported, uncorroborated and potentially fraudulent claims of unverified and unscientific Ebola cures have made the rounds since the outbreak of the EVD in West Africa and Nigeria in particular.

Regulatory agencies had since gone tough on what is described as moves to prevent people from being led astray and causing more panic in the country.

Just last week, the American Food and Drug Administration, FDA, and the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, threatened three companies – the Natural Solutions Foundation, the Young Living Company, and doTerra Company – with criminal charges for making Ebola treatment claims while marketing their products.

In a copy of the strongly- worded warning letter written by the Agency over the purported fraudulent health claims regarding Ebola treatments, the FDA reprimanded the companies over claims that their products could treat or prevent Ebola.

The latest development is coming on the heels of the threat by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration of Nigeria, NAFDAC, to prosecute a Nigerian Professor of Ophthalmology at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, for unverified cure claim of the EVD, using Ewedu, a native vegetable.

Penultimate week, Director – General of the Agency, Dr. Paul Orhii, who described the development as a national embarrassment, had vowed that the Ewedu cure claimant would face the full wrath of the law to serve as a deterrent warning to others with penchant to perpetuate such bogus claims that had tendency to mislead or create panic within the populace.

Essentially, claims of treatment or cures for diseases are not certifiable without incontrovertible evidence. But the FDA which threatened possible criminal prosecutions including jail, in the event of the failure to immediately withdraw such claims from the public domain, also came under criticism for its hard stance.