Revered 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon finished his report on ZMapp, the promising drug to combat Ebola, the day he died in a car accident in Manhattan. The segment airs Sunday, February 15 at 7pm on CBS.
During the outbreak of Ebola last year, supplies of ZMapp ran out in Western Africa. Now over a year later, just enough is finally being produced for a clinical trial in Liberia. The drug is made in Western Kentucky. The company that’s making ZMapp is Kentucky Bioprocessing, which was recently purchased by Reynolds American – known for its line of cigarettes (Camel, Kool, Winston, Salem, Doral, Pall Mall, Natural American Spirit). Yes, tobacco is being used to fight Ebola. As one executive tells Simon in his report, “there are good things that can be done with it [tobacco] and that’s our objective here.”