As the Ebola epidemic continues to grow in West Africa, with almost 8,400 cases reported by the World Health Organization up to 8 October, Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Dr Jeremy Farrar, Director of Wellcome Trust, call for unprecedented action to be taken with regards to testing potential treatments. This joint statement was originally published in the Wall Street Journal on 9 October 2014.