How much is an individual human life worth? Is one life worth more than another? Are some people more important than others? Who decides? These are some of the crucial ethical questions emerging as the world waits anxiously for anticipated vaccines and treatments under development.

There are currently no vaccines or specific treatments available for Ebola. When these interventions eventually become available, most experts anticipate the number of infections will far outnumber the supply. This raises two fundamental questions. Who will be vaccinated or treated, and who will decide?

Another serious question relating to the prospect of having new vaccines and therapies is whether or not to deliver them to patients as fast as they become available or to proceed with more caution as continuing safety evaluations are completed.

“It’s hard to know what’s the right thing to do,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert and professor at Vanderbilt University.

Human subject testing began earlier this month for a vaccine under development at the National Institutes of Health, and another vaccine is to be tested in humans at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Even so, the earliest estimates for availability are predicting a date sometime in 2015.

Health officials do not expect the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be controlled any time soon. Conservative estimates have more than 20,000 infections expected before the epidemic is reined in. Some have warned that the total number of cases may be much larger, even approaching 100,000.

The distribution of even a shortage of Ebola interventions will involve serious deliberation because the decision of who to treat bears directly on how quickly the outbreak is controlled.

“The situation is already a tinderbox,” said Oliver Brady, a University of Oxford epidemiologist. “The decisions have to be made now.”

According to the World Health Organization, almost 5,000 people have become ill with Ebola. Among these, almost 2,500 have died.

Ebola virus is transmitted from infected individuals through bodily fluids including blood, urine, saliva, and vomit. Caregivers and any others that come into contact with patients and their specimens, clothing, bedding, and even corpses are at extreme risk for contracting the virus.

Vaccines are being developed to prevent infections, while treatments under development will potentially be useful in reducing the death toll.