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No Quick Fix
Posted by FoM on June 12, 2000 at 22:01:56 PT
Editorial
Source: New Scientist
It will take more than a shot in the arm to wipe out addiction. At first glance, vice vaccines look just great. These injections promise to inactivate drugs such as cocaine, heroin, speed and nicotine in the bloodstream before they reach the brain. Without the "hit", people just won't come back for more. 
It's true that these vaccines are still being developed, so their full risks and benefits are not yet clear. But all the signs are that for people who are in danger of overdosing, or for addicts who want to get themselves clean but need some help to overcome their craving, the vaccines will be immensely valuable. But like many new technologies, they also bring difficult choices. Will convicted criminals who steal to feed their drug habit be allowed back onto the street if they agree to be vaccinated, for example? Could a judge even compel these people to be vaccinated? Perhaps the most contentious debate that vice vaccines have raised is whether they should be given routinely to children, like polio or measles vaccines. This is not a distant worry. No sooner have some researchers published the results of vaccine trials than they have found themselves inundated with requests from worried parents who want their children vaccinated. Is this really what we want for future generatons? For any society that values personal freedom, the answer has to be no. People have the right to choose how to behave, whether it's good or bad, legal or not. Let's not ignore the fact that millions of people take illicit drugs for pleasure without becoming addicted. Administering vice vaccines will mean that youngsters are no longer free to make such choices for themselves. It would be like a return to Pleasantville. And, remember, we're just talking about illicit drugs here. One vaccine under development acts against nicotine, and if it's nicotine today, why not caffeine tomorrow? Society's attitudes to drugs change. Forty years ago, smoking was fine. A century ago, American ship operators were giving stevedores cocaine to speed up their work. Like it or not, people have been taking mind- altering chemicals since before recorded history. Each vaccine acts only against a specific drug, and stopping people getting high on one drug will simply push them to take others--as addiction researchers have already found. So drug use won't go away, the drugs will just change. Opposing the widespread use of vice vaccines for youngsters is not to advocate drug use. By all means let vice vaccines spark a revolution in detox clinics. But when it comes to helping children deal with drugs, the way to help them is through education, ensuring that they can follow lifestyles that are incompatible with drug taking, and giving them the tools to spot risks and make informed choices. The problem of drug abuse is bound up with modern society in complex ways. Simple chemical solutions are unlikely to provide the whole answer.  No Quick Fixhttp://www.newscientist.com/editorial/From New Scientist Magazine, 10 June 2000.© Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 2000No More KicksFeatureNew Scientist MagazineThere are treatments on the way that promise to destroy the allure of addictive drugs for good. Problem solved? Philip Cohen discovers it's not that easy. Billy wanted to be bad. He just never quite made it. Sure, he'd put in the hours hanging out with the wrong crowd. He'd snorted what they snorted, injected what they injected and smoked what they smoked. But while his friends found bliss or oblivion, Billy was left to watch from the sidelines, untouched by the drugs. Billy's parents couldn't have been happier with the result. Years ago, they'd made the decision to vaccinate their son against addictive chemicals. Thanks to a few simple injections, Billy's blood was brimming with antibodies that bind to these substances and stop them getting to his brain, like a thin red line of defence against life's vices. Billy may be fictitious, but the prospect of an anti-drug vaccine isn't just a rebellious teenager's nightmare. Academic labs and at least five companies are in the advanced stages of animal testing for antibody therapies against cocaine, phencyclidine (PCP), methamphetamine and even nicotine. One anti-cocaine vaccine has already been tested for safety in drug abusers. By the end of the year, it could be undergoing its first efficacy trials. Treating drug abusers may be just the start. The idea that a jab in the arm could take the kick out of cocaine and other drugs raises some thorny questions. Should people be vaccinated, for example, simply because they belong to a group thought to be particularly at risk of becoming addicted? Should parents be allowed to make that decision for their children? Might companies screen job applicants for traces of anti-drug antibodies, in the belief that this would finger former users? It may be years before the first anti-vice vaccine goes on the market. But the ethical debate has begun. "I don't think it's too early to start thinking about these things," says Frank Vocci, director of the drug dependence research programme at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in Washington DC. For now, these therapies are being developed for addicts who want to kick the habit or who overdose. The problem is particularly acute for cocaine--a drug for which there is currently no established medical treatment. In the US alone, millions of people regularly snort, inject or smoke cocaine, and each year, for 150 000 of them, the pleasure trip ends with a visit to the emergency room. And cocaine is growing in popularity in Britain too. Experiments with rats and monkeys have already shown that an injection of antibodies can stop cocaine-addicted animals from seeking out the drug. The hope now is that this will help people who want to quit. "This isn't a cure, it's like a safety belt," says Michael Owens of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. "For people who use it right, we think it will greatly reduce the chance they get hurt." But potential misuse of the vaccine seems destined to trigger as much interest as its benefits. Barbara Fox remembers about six years ago, when her team at the Massachusetts-based company ImmuLogic presented their grant request to the NIDA for the cocaine vaccine now in clinical trials, it was turned down flat. It was considered too revolutionary, and there were fears that it might be used on people who hadn't given their consent. "They were worried it would be used coercively," says Fox, who is now at Addiction Therapies in Wayland, Massachusetts. Such fears don't surprise Peter Cohen, a doctor and lawyer at Georgetown University in Washington DC, who has written on the legal implications of vaccines against addictive drugs (Drug and Alcohol Dependence, vol 48, p 167). He thinks that American law would allow parents to vaccinate rebellious children like Billy against their will. "You don't need a law degree to see who is going to win that fight," he says. He is less concerned about the spectre of job applicants being screened for antibodies. "I doubt that would stand up to legal challenge," he says. But that doesn't mean companies won't try, he adds. The idea of targeting "at risk" groups with an anti-addiction vaccine may have been one reason why the NIDA panel initially took fright, according to Charles Schuster, a former NIDA director now at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. "I think someone called it a racist plot," he says. But many people are untroubled by such worries, says Schuster, and he suspects that a vaccine would have wide appeal. In the 1970s, when he was director of the drug abuse centre at the University of Chicago, Schuster was the first to show that anti-drug antibodies, in this case anti-heroin, could work in animals. "When I published, I got calls and letters from parents all over the world saying would you please, please immunise my child," he says. And it's not just parents who think vaccines might be a good idea. Ali Fattom, a vaccine specialist at the Florida-based company Nabi, thinks that many kids would volunteer. Fattom recently asked the classmates of his 16-year-old son about their feelings towards an anti-nicotine vaccine. "Most of these guys say I'll take it first thing, because that would relieve the risk of experimenting with cigarettes and getting addicted," he says. But the ethical issues surrounding these vaccines run deep. "Should we be taking away people's pleasures?" asks John St Clair Roberts, medical director at the British company Cantab Pharmaceuticals, based in Cambridge, which took over Fox's vaccine programme from ImmuLogic and now runs the clinical trials. "A person who gives up today might change their mind tomorrow," he points out. "But you can't turn off the immune system with a switch." None of this will matter, however, unless the successes of the animal studies can be translated to humans. And this is far from certain--not least because researchers don't yet understand exactly how these vaccines work. Indeed, the approach was all but abandoned shortly after Schuster's pioneering work in Chicago. The work began when a colleague pointed out a newly developed antibody treatment for accidental overdoses of the heart medicine digitalis, which worked by binding the drug safely in the blood. Schuster and his team began to wonder whether it might be possible to treat heroin addiction in the same way. Constant Cravings: The idea seemed straightforward enough. A major problem for recovering addicts is relapse. After a period of abstinence, they succumb to a craving for their drug and take a hit. But that taste only reinforces a greater hankering, and starts an ugly cycle of treatment and relapse. Schuster reasoned that because antibodies are too big to cross the blood-brain barrier, any drug they grabbed would be kept safely away from the brain. To test the idea, Schuster and his team created a vaccine by chemically joining a heroin-like molecule to a protein that they knew would be detected by the immune system and stimulate antibody-producing cells. Next, they inoculated heroin- addicted rhesus monkeys that had been trained to self-administer by hitting a lever which injected heroin straight into their blood. Their results were dramatic. At the peak of the vaccine's effectiveness, immunised monkeys found heroin no more alluring than a salty water control (Nature, vol 252, p 708). But despite this success, there were major drawbacks. In particular, the animals had to undergo a brutal inoculation regime several times a day for weeks for the vaccine to be effective, which caused ulcers to form at the site of the injection. The researchers were also disappointed that the monkeys' antibody levels seemed to drop within a few weeks, and that as the drug dose was raised, the antibodies became saturated, and the animals resumed their heroin habit. The approach was all but abandoned shortly afterwards because, on top of these problems, it faced competition from other methods of treating heroin addiction. It was around this time that other groups were reporting excellent results using chemicals such as methadone and naltrexone, which block the action of heroin by competing with the drug for special receptor sites in the brain. Everyone became convinced that the true salvation for addicts everywhere lay in this "small chemical" therapy. One reason they seemed a better bet was that their molecules are similar in size to the drug they are countering, so they could be given in doses equal to or greater than the drug, while antibodies, being large molecules, seemed easier to outnumber. It was nearly 20 years before researchers seriously reconsidered the vaccine idea, and for a simple reason: desperation. No drug had emerged to treat cocaine and its use was reaching new heights. Then a pharmaceuticals company asked Kim Janda at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California to develop a vaccine that would stimulate animals to produce antibodies which could be used in a cocaine screening test. To Janda's surprise, the vaccine his team created dramatically blunted the psychoactive effects of cocaine in rats, halting the hyperactivity and sniffing that the drug usually inspired (Nature, vol 378, p 727). As it turned out, Fox and her colleagues at ImmuLogic were right on Janda's heels, having decided to take a gamble on a cocaine vaccine of their own. They soon reported that immunised rats would stop self-dosing cocaine, much as Schuster's monkeys resisted heroin (Nature Medicine, vol 2, p 1129). Advances in vaccine design meant that the treatment worked after just a small number of injections, and caused no ill effects. So ImmuLogic pushed ahead with clinical safety trials, ultimately selling the rights to Cantab. The British company recently reported that there were no adverse reactions among the 34 recovering cocaine users who participated in the study. All produced substantial levels of antibodies to cocaine, and in three of the participants, antibodies could be detected a year later. With the prospects for Cantab's cocaine vaccine looking promising, other labs have gone on to investigate the effects of vaccines on other addictive drugs. For sheer numbers, the most impressive must be the study reported this February at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in Arlington, Virginia, by Fattom and his colleagues. Over one week, they infused rats with a dose of nicotine equivalent to 1400 cigarettes, together with antibodies against nicotine. They then stopped the nicotine infusion and looked for the characteristic signs of nicotine withdrawal, such as chattering teeth, gasps and tremors. Even after this enormous dose, the symptoms were reduced by half relative to unimmunised controls. At a more realistic nicotine intake rate, the antibody was completely protective. This is encouraging evidence that the vaccine might not only help people give up cigarettes, but could stop others from becoming addicted, says Fattom. Other researchers have shown that vaccines are effective at blocking the effects of PCP and methamphetamine. The success of these animal experiments might suggest that the ability of antibodies to mop up the drug is now beyond doubt. But things are not that simple. Fox's group, for instance, showed early on that 30 seconds after a dose of cocaine, the brain concentration of the drug in immunised rats is reduced by only 30 to 63 per cent. So it is still at a level that would have given an unimmunised animal a rush. "The paper calculation tells you it shouldn't work," says Fox. "But the animal behaviour data tell you it does. So the question is why." There are at least two ideas in circulation. One is linked to the notion that a drug's addictive effect is related to the speed at which it enters the brain. Cocaine is more addictive when smoked as crack than when snorted because the lungs have a larger surface area than the nose. So for the antibody to work, it might not need to hang on to the drug, just slow its progress to the brain. By contrast, the negative or "dysphoric" effects of cocaine such as anxiety and nausea seem to come from its final concentration in the brain. So antibodies might take away all the good effects of cocaine and leave only the bad. Owens has other data suggesting that antibody therapy ends up targeting the brain selectively. His lab has done extensive work on the kinetics of PCP interactions in the brains of rats. When the researchers infuse the animals with extremely high doses of purified anti-PCP antibodies, the brain concentration of the drug drops to zero, even though levels remains high in other parts of the body (The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, vol 292, p 831). Mind-Altering: Owens suspects that PCP wouldn't have the psychoactive effects it did if it wasn't able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier rapidly. This may explain why a little bit of antibody works far better than expected--it mops up the drug in the blood vessels and the resulting drug diffusion gradient causes the drug to leak rapidly back from the brain into the blood vessels. "If one organ is preferentially protected, isn't it wonderful that it's the brain?" says Owens. But even given immunotherapy's mysterious success, researchers are eager to improve on it further by changing the method of immunisation. Inoculation with a vaccine, made from a drug linked to a protein, causes active immunity, a natural antibody response which triggers the body to produce a wide array of molecules with varying abilities to grab the drug. It's a method that can remain effective for a few months to a couple of years. By contrast, the animal can also be given passive immunity by infusing it with monoclonal antibodies, a single species of molecule produced from an antibody-producing cell cultured in the laboratory. Monoclonals can be selected to have very specific properties, such as very tight binding of the drug, but they are short-lived, lasting just a few weeks. In a paper just published (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences vol 97, p 6202), Janda describes how he has combined the active and passive approaches to deliver what he calls a "one-two punch". The vaccine alone is able to stop rodents from self-administering the drug until high doses are available. But with monoclonals included, even doses equivalent to three hits of cocaine are blunted and the animals stop pushing the lever after a few tries. Janda compares the natural antibody response to a group of workers of varying strengths trying to capture the drug. But the monoclonal antibody is in a different league: "It's like sending in Superman to help," he says. At Columbia University in New York City, Donald Landry and his colleagues have even found that some monoclonals can destroy cocaine molecules. His team developed these "catalytic" antibodies by creating a vaccine that mimics cocaine's "transition state", a fragile form of the molecule which breaks down into fragments--ecgonine methyl ester, or EME, and benzoic acid--which aren't toxic or psychoactive. They used the vaccine to isolate monoclonal antibodies that bind to the cocaine and twist it into its fragile state, making it more likely to snap apart. Shooting up: a protein-bound drug prompts the immune system to make a variety of antibodies which mop up the drug. Alternatively, a vaccine can take just the best of these antibodies. A newer approach is to make catalytic antibodies that distort and break up the drug. This ability to break down cocaine seems to give the antibody extra potency. For one thing, the broken fragments just slip away, leaving the antibody free to work again. At concentrations at which a comparable cocaine-binding antibody had no effect in rats, Landry's catalytic antibodies increased the lethal threshold for cocaine threefold and also dramatically blunted self-dosing of cocaine by addicted animals (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 95, p 10 176). The vaccines are at last looking as though they might be a more promising treatment than the small chemicals. Antibodies don't mess with brain chemistry the way blocking drugs do, so there should be fewer side effects. And antibodies are expected to be long-lived--from weeks to years--compared with a single day for a dose of naltrexone. "Right now, an addicted patient has to ask themselves every day if they should take their medicine or get high," says Colin Brewer of the Stapleford Clinic in London. "If they only have to make that decision every few weeks, it would be a great relief." He thinks antibodies would be a big help to recovering addicts who have trouble sticking with their therapy. Researchers are confident they can push the vaccine technology even further. And they have another reason to be optimistic. It's only anecdotal, but the story is often told of two men from the Cantab trial who started doing hits of cocaine after their treatment--to no avail. One experienced nothing from the drug, the other felt his heart race, but didn't achieve a high. Tom Kosten, a psychiatrist at Yale University who conducted the trial, says that if this anecdote foretells that effective immunotherapy is possible, then he, for one, will gladly confront the moral and medical morass that will follow. "In my thinking," he says, "if we have a real vaccine to argue about, we would be very lucky." No More Kickshttp://www.newscientist.com/features/features_22424.htmlFrom New Scientist Magazine, 10 June 2000.© Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 2000 Related Articles:A Magic Bullet in Cocaine Wars? http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread4975.shtmlCan an Antibody Gobble Up Cocaine Cravings?http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread4622.shtml
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Comment #10 posted by dddd on June 14, 2000 at 14:38:52 PT
Leshner
One more item to add to this deluxe discourse. I think Mr. Leshners' enemic response to the cocktail question,is indicative of the blind spot that many people have, when it comes to alcohol,and tobacco being drugs.This dichotomy is similarly avoided,and ignored by most drug war proponents. It is most questionable,and wreckless,to say there is no such thing as recreational drug use.It's almost like saying there is no such thing as recreational music use...(?)...dddd 
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Comment #9 posted by kaptinemo on June 14, 2000 at 12:04:35 PT:
I wish I could have been there.
BCG, I would have happily hounded Leshner for his weak and unsupportable dissembling. 5,000 years? As compared to 12,000 for cannabis? Not being an M.D. but having an understanding of biochemistry courtesy of a stint in the Chemical Corps, I always thought that an organism acquires receptor sites in the brain as a result of long-term evolutionary exposure to the relevant compound extant in the environment. Since alcohol is a compond that occurs rarely in nature, while THC has *always* been present to a lesser or greater extent in cannabis, we may well have developed anandamide receptors *long* before we developed those related to alcohol. Which might blow Leshner's justification out of the water. This is the only way these antis will ever be publicly shown to be the frauds they are... to catch them with their hypocritical pants down.
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Comment #8 posted by bcg on June 14, 2000 at 09:55:50 PT:
ibogaine
I am about to go to a conference of drug abuse researchers. There is a group that will present ibogaine data there, but I have reservations about its use as a therapy. It seems to be neurotoxic to serotonin neurons, like ecstasy. I just came from hearing Alan Leshner talk. He was asked by one of the psychiatrists here about the difference between use and abuse. He said that he believed that there was no such thing as resreational drug use. The psychiatrist then asked him about the drinks they had together. Leshner trailed off and said something about alcohol having been around for 5000 years. A very poor response. Overall, though the talk was not too offensive.But, dddd, your point is well taken. There is a big debate in the treatment community about replacement therapy. The key is probably to learn more about the associations drug addicts have between environment and drug use. That is part of the focus of my research.
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Comment #7 posted by dddd on June 13, 2000 at 23:41:58 PT
Insight
Thank you bcg for the informed commentary.Your dissertation intrigues me. I appreciate the way you explained drug therapy,for drugs.It is indeed strange,to think that a drug that blocks the craving for a particular drug,by targeting certain functions in the brain,would help anyone with a substance abuse problem. If drug X,stops the craving for drug A,,,now you are strung out on drug X,so you wont want drug A.Basically nothing has changed except the further chemical alteration of your brain.You no longer "need",or "want",drug A,as long as you remember to take X.Now,you have to take drug B,for which you need drug Y,to cancel or reduce your craving,and on and on. Treating drug addictions with more drugs is a strange inversion,but I'm quite sure that legal drug dealing mega-corporations will,(and probably already are),try to develop legal drugs to "help" those who take the drugs that they dont sell.There's big money in government mandated programs. The only exception to treating substance abuse,with a substance,would be something like ibogane.From what I have read,and heard,an ibogane experience can alter ones cravings dramatically.Its effects on addiction are reportedly more spiritual,than chemical."it is generally recognized that only people who want to stop using a substance will stop,,,"..I think this is true,,even though many addictions are physical,real therapy is a spiritual matter....dddd
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Comment #6 posted by bcg on June 13, 2000 at 06:41:13 PT:
The problem with these vaccines...
is that they are surmountable. I am a grad student, and my dissertation is on the neurochemistry of cocaine reinforcement. There are several lines of thinking in debate over addiction therapy. The vaccines prevent cocaine from hitting it's targets, but they really don't strike at the heart of the problem of addiction - the underlying brain chemistry that prodices the craving. So, users will switch to methamphetamine which produces comparable (albeit more dramatic) effects. I think meth would be hard to form a vaccine against, since its chemical structure is so similar to several brain transmitters in the body. These vaccines really are geared to drive up the COST of addiction to the user - the IDEA being users who can't afford to get high won't. The antibodies to cocaine can become saturated with enough cocaine in the blood, so instead of hooking up with his usual weekend dose, he has to buy 12 times as much. We all know what happens when an addict needs to buy more drug than he can afford, so I really don't like this approach. I see the advent of court-ordered vaccinations to be somewhat like the idea that child molesters be castrated. It is a superficial fix to a much deeper solution. Anyway, for those of us actually working on the science, it is generally recognized that only people who want to stop using a substance will stop, so anything the court ORDERS is suspect to me (and court-ordered incarceration is most certainly the best way to ensure all of the environmental and psychological problems which lead to desperate addiction).Cheers
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on June 13, 2000 at 05:14:09 PT:
Dan raises a very legitimate question
Back in the early 70's I was a big sci-fi reader. In one edition of ANALOG magazine was a story called the "Swan Song of Dame Horse", about some scientists who develop a 'paravirion' which nullifys the analgesic - and pleasurable - aspects of opiates. This would be sprayed a la the Fusarium fungus on the ground of allied producing nations and those not so friendly to us. (Remember, this was at the very beginning of the Nixon phase of the DrugWar, and we were spraying Agent Orange all over South Vietnam. Better living through chemicals, uh-hunh!). Dan's question came up in the story, and the answer was that, of course, ONLY THE GOVERNMENT WOULD HAVE A NON-INFECTED SUPPLY.That in a nutshell is why this thing *must never happen*. The US government has been moving incrementally, slowly, towards of position of total control of all means of analgesia. Doctors must now have a *DEA* license on top of their other credentials; this is why they are so scared to prescribe opiate-based meds when their patients are experiencing chronic pain. If 'too much' in the way of pain meds are prescribed, the DEA steps in and takes the doc's license. (Lest anyone think this is only about chronic pain, my Da was in hospital recently for a very painful surgical procedure, and they *undermedicated* him for his pain. Which means they might very well do the same *to you* if you have to go in. All because of the bloody DEA...who might be many things, but not doctors.)Needless to say, in 20 years time, if this madness is not halted, you might have to jump through various hoops, sign loyalty oaths, kiss the flag and whatnot to get the pain meds you need or to have life-saving surgery.A very chilling prospect indeed, particularly if you belong to a political group that the US Gov does not approve of. Children, can you say "political triage"?Another example of why sometimes it is not such a good thing when Life imitates Art.
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Comment #4 posted by Dan B on June 12, 2000 at 23:44:25 PT:
What Next?
First, please pardon the omission of the word "vaccine" in the first sentence of the first full paragraph of the last message I posted here. Second, consider this quotation "Each vaccine acts only against a specific drug, and stopping people getting high on one drug will simply push them to take others." The DEAland response to this statement would enevitably be "so have drug addicts take as many vaccinations as possible to avoid switching from one drug to another." I can foresee a future in which the drugs we use for effective treatments against any number of diseases, disorders, and discomforts will become useless. Medically, these vaccinations against drugs could send us back to the Stone Age.Thought I'd add another 2 cents worth.
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Comment #3 posted by Dan B on June 12, 2000 at 23:37:15 PT:
Another Question
Consider the following scenario:Suppose they do come up with an effective against, say, heroin abuse (an opium derivative). Suppose also that parents get their way and are allowed to have their doctors inject their children with the vaccine. Now Billy has grown up, and one day he gets into an automobile accident, or needs an operation, whatever. What happens when Billy is given morphine or codeine for his pain? Nothing. The pain medication could very well be ineffective because Billy's parents decided to give him a vaccination against the effects of heroin, and that vaccination could very well affect Billy's ability to effectively use other opiates for legitimate medical purposes. And who knows what the effects would be for synthetic opiates, like Demerol? It seems that Billy's doctors could have a terrible time attempting to find effective pain medication for Billy. Is this what we would want for Billy?The idea that we should create vaccinations against drugs is absurd (as brilliantly noted by dddd--as usual, you have written some great comments). Thanks, FoM, for the enlightening articles.
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on June 12, 2000 at 22:47:32 PT
My Question
Hi dddd,What I want to know is if a person gets a vaccination to not crave a drug what will that do to the persons natural ability to find happiness in normal everyday things? Will it also take those feelings away too?I just wonder!Peace, FoM!
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Comment #1 posted by dddd on June 12, 2000 at 22:39:24 PT
solutions
Although these are good articles,and I think it's a nice thought,that these people are trying to create drugs to make it so people wont want other drugs,,,,,in my opinion,,this is somewhat absurd. Perhaps it will lead to a way to make it easier for people to become un-addicted,but I see this as a kind of band-aid therapy approach. If a person has a problem,and is strung out on whatever substance,,,I dont think drugs should be used to cure drugs....I'm not rejecting the idea,but I think the better approach is to address the spiritual disarray that is at the core of altering the mind to escape.Further chemical alterations dont seem to be that good of an idea to me.....dddd
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