Amid alarm over the Ebola virus, a flurry of pitches has sprung up for products that claim to prevent and treat the deadly infection. Online -- and increasingly on social media sites -- these products are being hawked by paid consultants, supplement gurus and "wellness advocates," whose claims range from silly to pseudo-scientific.

In at least three cases to date, those pitches have drawn letters from the Food and Drug Administration, warning the companies involved to stop asserting that their products are safe and effective in treatment of Ebola or any other disease.

A late-September letter from the agency to the Utah-based company Young Living warns that its paid consultants have taken to the Internet, as well as to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, to claim that several of the company's essential oils can treat and ward off Ebola infection (as well as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, asthma, autism and cancers of all sorts).

A similar FDA letter went to DoTerra International, another Utah-based company selling essential oils.

In these cases, consultants and "wellness advocates" have touted the curative or preventive powers of melaleuca oil (also known as tea tree oil), cinnamon oil, oregano oil, and a blend of cinnamon, rosemary, clove, eucalyptus, and lemon oils marketed as "Thieves oil" for Ebola.

"If I were exposed to Ebola or had reason to believe I could be sick with it, I would use some of these oils every 10 minutes for a few hours, then cut back to every hour for the rest of the first day," wrote one consultant for Young Living on the website, under the heading, Essential Oils & More to Combat Ebola Virus.

"Then I would use them every 2 waking hours of the day for at least a week, or longer if it was known I was sick, the writer added.

Elsewhere on the same website, the health advisor wrote, "If Ebola was going around in my area . . . I would apply [Thieves oil] to my feet and armpits 2x/day or more and take it in capsules at least 2x/day for preventive purposes.

Essential oils have not shown any evidence of effectiveness against viruses, and certainly not against the Ebola virus, said Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and professor of medicine at New York University.

The low value of such oils in fighting infectious disease is evident in a simple comparison, said Weissman: While American diets are not, on the whole, rich in the use of essential oils, African diets are.

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Unproven Ebola cures, preventives proliferate