A woman reads a pamphlet as New York Healthcare workers attend an Ebola educational session at the Jacob Javits Convention center in New York, October 21, 2014. Thousands of healthcare workers representing dozens of clinical and non-clinical positions att
A woman reads a pamphlet as New York Healthcare workers attend an Ebola educational session at the Jacob Javits Convention center in New York, October 21, 2014. Thousands of healthcare workers representing dozens of clinical and non-clinical positions attended the session that featured experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other area infection control experts to provide training and information on caring for potential Ebola patients. REUTERS/Mike Segar REUTERS/Mike Segar

A number of health care workers and medical associations in the U.S., fearing for their own lives, are seriously mulling refusing extending medical assistance to patients infected with the Ebola virus.

The infection of two Dallas nurses who cared for Thomas Duncan, the first person in the U.S. to have Ebola, has left medical practitioners baffled. Despite wearing some level of protective equipment, the two nurses still got infected with the virus. In fact, Amber Joy Vinson said earlier she cannot recall any breach in protocols that could have led to her getting the disease.

A report by Reuters, citing Dr. G. Kevin Donovan, director of the bioethics center at Georgetown University, said there is now an ongoing discussion in some hospital systems whether patients diagnosed with a confirmed Ebola infection should be attended at all given the risk level of infection. But the hard and present reality also poses a moral dilemma because doctors and health care workers are supposed to "do everything" to make a sick patient recover and live longer.

The hospital systems were identified Geisinger Health System, with hospitals in Pennsylvania, and Intermountain Healthcare, with facilities in Utah. Reuters said medical practitioners in the U.S. are fearful of the west African disease because the world "has almost no experience treating Ebola patients in state-of-the-art facilities rather than the rudimentary ones in Africa." Moreover, there is a dearth of reliable data when a patient is already beyond help, even "whether dialysis can make the difference between life and death, or even whether cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can be done safely with proper protective equipment and protocols."

Doctors in the U.S. are considering making a list of procedures detailing certain procedures that must no longer be performed over an Ebola patient. But Donovan reminded them to not offer those procedures "is not ethically acceptable."

But medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan said the dilemma currently dividing U.S. health practitioners isn't a first time for the entire global history of medicine. He cited Galen, a Greek physician and philosopher, who during the bubonic plague 1,800 years ago fled Rome. In the more recent 1980s, there have been some who refused to treat HIV/AIDS patients.

"The idea that a doctor would stick to his post to the last during an epidemic, that's not part of the Hippocratic Oath," Markel told Reuters. "If you feel your life is at risk you don't have to stay and provide care."

Related:

Ebola Expands in U.S., Now in New York; Dallas Nurse Amber Joy Vinson Declared Virus-Free