Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel Agrees Budget Cuts Were a Factor in Ebola Response

"There is no doubt that the National Institutes of health budget has remained flat. It did have a $10 billion a bounce during the recovery act that was present [indecipherable]. And I do know that prior to leaving the NIH, certainly before 2008, there was a lot of promise and talk. Actually, I had that discussion with the head of the Vaccine Research center about the ethics of testing the vaccine and how we go about that in this randomized trial the right way.

So they were -- in 2008, they were on the verge, really in detail thinking about how to conduct the trials. And you have got to ask yourself what else between now and then except the lack of a major outbreak led to the slowness and funding is clearly one major issue going forward."