Musician Bob Gelfof arrives for the recording of the Band Aid 30 charity single in west London Nov. 15, 2014.Neil Hall/Reuters
People in developed countries are unlikely to catch Ebola from kisses or tears, medical experts are cautioning in the wake of the release of a high-profile charity song by a group of pop stars.
The musicians, including Bono, Ed Sheeran and One Direction, recorded a new version of the 1984 charity song Do They Know It's Christmas? on Saturday and released it Monday, with lyrics that were tweaked to allude to the danger of infection.
"There's a world outside your window – And it's a world of dread and fear. Where a kiss of love can kill you – And there's death in every tear," the song's second section now states.
While the musical stars, who call themselves Band Aid 30, had the best of intentions, the scientific evidence is not as alarming as their lyrics suggest.
"People should not fret about this," said William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville, Tenn.
He said that in the three western African countries with widespread Ebola transmission, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, there are indeed concerns about funeral practices that include washing, touching and kissing the bodies of patients who carry a high viral load.
However, Dr. Schaffner said in an interview that Ebola patients in a Western country would be in confined in hospital before they reach a stage where tears or saliva would be contagious.
"At that point, you're no longer vertical … you're being cared for in a hospital by people in hazmat suits and whether tears and kisses are hazardous would be academic," he said.
The crucial factor in the transmission of Ebola is whether a person shows symptoms, said Andrew Pekosz, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore.
Ebola is not contagious if the person is not experiencing active symptoms.
"Neither kissing or touching the tears of an asymptomatic person has been associated with Ebola transmission to date," Dr. Pekosz said in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail.
"I don't want to sound overly critical of the song lyrics because it is music, not science – but [it is] important to note that transmission is associated with symptomatic individuals."
A situation assessment issued last month by the World Health Organization similarly notes that "saliva and tears may … carry some risk. However, the studies implicating these additional bodily fluids were extremely limited in sample size and the science is inconclusive."
One of those studies, published in 2007 in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, examined clinical specimens of bodily fluids collected from 26 patients in a Uganda hospital during an outbreak in 2000.
The virus was found in saliva, stool, semen, breast milk and in the sole sample of tears. The authors of the study said their results supported the conventional view that Ebola transmission occurs during the acute phase of the illness.
"Whether the act of kissing or coming in contact with tears can transmit the virus has not been established scientifically, but if a person was symptomatic, one should avoid any kind of contact with them in the absence of personal protective equipment," Dr. Pekosz said.
The Band Aid 30 single has also been criticized in Britain by commenters who felt it was a misguided, patronizing initiative.
Appearing on Sky News, Band Aid organizer Bob Geldof replied in typical fashion when asked about the criticism, uttering expletives before the interview was prematurely wrapped up.
"I think we can grant the musicians some artistic liberty, as their cause is a great one," said Thomas Talbot, chief hospital epidemiologist at the Vanderbilt Medical Center.
Alluding to the song Satisfaction, Dr. Talbot added: "Hopefully we're not using popular music as our source of science truth, just as we shouldn't use songs to teach grammar, as the Rolling Stones can surely attest."
Detecting Ebola The illness has an average eight-to-10 day incubation period (although it could be from 2 to 21 days). Ebola is contagious only if the person is experiencing active symptoms, not during the incubation period.
Symptoms include fever, severe headache, muscle and stomach pain, weakness before worsening to include diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding or bruising.
Because the symptoms are similar to other infectious diseases, a key indicator is whether the patient has travelled to areas of widespread infection, Dr. Schaffner said.