The aforementioned rights to a safe workplace imply that individuals will contribute to that safety through proper hygiene, hand washing, use of universal precautions, engaging in training, and adherence to biosafety guidelines (including the proper use of PPE, isolation facilities, and barrier protection when indicated).

While individual EPs certainly have a right to do what they wish on their own time (within the limits of the law), they cannot refuse to come to work when scheduled. To do so would undermine any vestige of professionalism and potentially place patients, colleagues, and the public health at risk. Opt-out policies for trainees do not extend to fully credentialed EP attending staff.

If people voluntarily choose to help in West Africa, they must understand that the assumption of individual risk does not give them license to burden others or put others at risk. EVD disproportionately affects HCWs; half the physicians in all of Liberia are now dead, and 38% of EVD cases in Guinea are HCWs. The current Zaire strain of Ebola, responsible for the current epidemic, is especially lethal, carrying an 89% case fatality rate. Given that there is no effective treatment, this risk is not trivial. For this reason, EVD was declared to be a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization on Aug. 8, 2014.

We can and should support the many brave EP colleagues who are generously volunteering in the global war on EVD. However, we should enlist and support those soldiers who understand that courage is the Aristotelian mean between foolhardy, cowboy, or carelessness on the one hand and self-concerned, cringing, or cowardice on the other. Courage is a classic virtue of antiquity and remains so in the fight against poverty and tropical disease to this day.

As educated professionals, EPs should be allowed to assess their own risk, but EPs must understand they may become liable if their risk assessment is reckless or inaccurate. EPs must take their guardianship of the public trust seriously. Often missing from the current discussions is the medical fact that EVD patients are typically infectious in the hours prior to developing fever. Furthermore, they remain infectious for weeks, even after symptoms subside (eg, EV has been isolated in semen 80 days after infection). Hence, an exposed EP cannot know for certain if they are infectious until adequate incubation time has passed after exposure.

While self-monitoring for three weeks is recommended after potential exposure, there is no evidence to support a 21-day quarantine. Hence, evidence-based EPs may readily dispute the need to follow laws in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey that mandate such quarantines. However, we have no countervailing evidence to suggest what is the safe length of time to be in quarantine, self-imposed or otherwise.