ACSH friend Dr. David Seres, the director of nutritional medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, wrote a thought-provoking piece in The Hill about rampant Ebola paranoia the US, entitled What we learned from Ebolanoia .
He begins by pointing out that the unfounded hysteria over Ebola in the US Ebolanoia is more dangerous to us than the virus. There is no vaccine against Ebolanoia, he writes, except factual and scientific information.
We have learned facts about the disease itself, for instance, Ebola is not as easy to transmit as people feared, and it can be handled safely using proper procedures. But we ve also learned how widespread hysteria affects our society: politicians will stretch the truth and use the devastating illness for their own political gain, the dietary supplement industry will throw ethics into the wind to promote their unproven Ebola treatments, and panic often wins over reason.
Dr. Seres, who is also a Public Voices Fellow with the Op-Ed Project and a national award-winning medical educator who trains Ebola volunteers with the New York City Medical Reserve Corps. concludes, While I am a strong proponent of free speech, perhaps communicating about a potent threat such as Ebola should be left to those who know what they are talking about.
You can read his entire op-ed here.