Vaccinate Against Drug Addiction?

[JohnRich 4]

In the news, from England:

Children to get jabs against drug addiction

"A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by ministers...

"Under the plans, doctors would immunise children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection. The scheme could operate in a similar way to the current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme.

"Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years..."

Full Story

[jjiimmyyt 0]

John - Wadda you think though, good/bad?

"This isn't an iron lung, people. You can actually disconnect and not die." -Dave

[lawrocket 3]

Jeez. I wonder what will happen in the future, when, for example, opiate painkillers do not work. Hey, it may cure the problem of stealing oxy, but Oxy won't be produced, anymore.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Zenister 0]

does the vacination cause and adverse reaction to smoking/drugs? or does it make one immune to the addictive effects??

aversion therapy (when misapplied and this would be a gross misapplication) is a form a torture..

edit:ok i read the full article...i'm wondering how it blocks the euphoric effect without affecting the human body's natural ability to create/experience the effect thru other means.....do orgasms get less interesting??

sounds like and immunization against having a really good time.

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Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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does the vacination cause and adverse reaction to smoking/drugs? or does it make one immune to the addictive effects??

aversion therapy (when misapplied and this would be a gross misapplication) is a form a torture..

edit:ok i read the full article...i'm wondering how it blocks the euphoric effect without affecting the human body's natural ability to create/experience the effect thru other means.....do orgasms get less interesting??

sounds like and immunization against having a really good time.

Brought to you by the same people who don't want human beings to ever have to be responsible for their own actions, or to have to exercise self control.

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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[TomAiello 26]

I wonder if they have one to "protect" you against the "high" from skydiving?

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[captain1 0]

Sounds like a concept that would have been conjured up by the Puritans. Outcasts from England back in the day.

[crozby 0]

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Brought to you by the same people who don't want human beings to ever have to be responsible for their own actions, or to have to exercise self control.

I've got shares in a company called Xenova that is designing vaccines for cocaine and nicotine. The purpose is to enable people addicted to those substances to qet off them.
Anyone who has been addicted to either knows what a God-send something like that would be.

Vaccinating kids is taking it a step to far and sounds like a load of bollocks to me.

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"Vaccinating kids is taking it a step to far and sounds like a load of bollocks to me."

Likewise.

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He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

[soilman 0]

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The purpose is to enable people addicted to those substances to qet off them.

According to the article it is not. It is to prevent people from ever getting on them.

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Anyone who has been addicted to either knows what a God-send something like that would be.

Why don't habitual drug users stop? Do they feel ill when abstaining? For as long as they abstain? If so, wouldn't something that causes them to not get the effect of the drug, make them feel just as ill while taking their favorite drug, as they feel while abstaining from it?

And like lawrocket noted: what about people who benefit from these or related drugs?

I am extremely anti-tobacco. I am against people putting tobacco smoke in other people's air. But this is not the way to stop them.

I consider opioids a godsend. I would never want to do anything to interfere with its ability to do what it does.

Also, there is the possibility that this might completely backfire. Instead of making people immune to the effects of these drugs, it might simply mean they have to take a humongous dose. Result -- they take more, to get the same high, and their livers and kidneys and perhaps their brains too, suffer more. Instead of just "addicts" now we have super addicts with kidney and liver problems costing the socialized medical system in Britain a fortune to treat.

Plus there are going to be biochemists working on drugs and vaccines to kill or weaken the virus that causes the decreased sensitivity to cocaine, tobacco, and "heroin."

Interesting that heroin, acetylated morphine, is not used medically in the US but is used in Britain. I think we should free up acetylated morphine for medical use in the US.

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Animal husbandry may not be necessary. We can maintain soil quality, for plant husbandry, with green manures and cover crops.

[peregrinerose 0]

This is plain sick. First, wouldn't it also decrease endorphin effect of things like sex, skydiving, etc? So these would be unhappy zombiepeople. Second, vaccines have risk. If it was not required for school enrollment, I would refuse to have my future children immunized. Immunizations have been linked to a host of problems, and though the incidence is very very low, it does happen. Why incur even more unnecessary chances?

I agree, self control is the real issue. And crappy parenting.

Jen

Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

[Lindsey 0]

Sounds like pie in the sky to me. I'd love to see the pharmacology of that...and how in the heck, with such different mechanisms of action of different drugs, one vaccine could solve such a broad, non-specific, problem of "drug addiction."

Unfortunately, we can't vaccinate people against doing stupid things....

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[PhillyKev 0]

There's been a lot of success lately in treating people for heroine and other opiate addiction by giving them medication that blocks opiate receptors. So, they can take all they want but won't get high, so don't take it anymore. It's good that people can be treated and receive help.

But vaccinating people against possible addiction is stupid. Like most things in the world, drugs can be used for good or ill. What happens when that person is suffering from stomach cancer and can't relieve the agonizing pain because they were vaccinated?

[gmanpilot 0]

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But vaccinating people against possible addiction is stupid.

What is so stupid about it if it has no negative effects? My father was an intelligent, rational, and productive individual, but his physiology was such that he was a sucker for addictive substances. He self medicated with booze most days until he was about 50, and he smoked his entire life. He knew smoking is what caused his heart-attack, stroke, and finally cancer, and still he could not quit, and it killed him. Some may say that he killed himself, and it is partially true. He tried several times, but he simply could not quit.

So this one person out of tens-of-millions who died as the result of addictive substances. I think his hospital bills were around $500,000.00, and our tax dollars paid the lions share. Imagine the financial impact of a vaccine that would banish tobacco addiction, not to mention the quality of life issues.

I think vaccinating people against addiction is smart, as long as there are no side effect issues. A mandatory vaccine resulting in sex that is less fun would be evil incarnate.

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-There's always free cheese in a mouse trap.

[PhillyKev 0]

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What is so stupid about it if it has no negative effects?

I pointed out the negative effect. The original and continued proper use of these drugs is to treat pain. Vaccinating people against their effects elliminates the good that they do.

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A mandatory vaccine resulting in sex that is less fun would be evil incarnate.

Some people have sex addictions. By your rationale, why not?

[soilman 0]

I think adults who make a choice to vaccinate themselves should be allowed to, but this should not be foisted on children.

The scaryest part is the plan is to vaccinate only "selected" children at "high risk." This is almost certainly is code for cultural intolerance and culture war.

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Animal husbandry may not be necessary. We can maintain soil quality, for plant husbandry, with green manures and cover crops.

[Lindsey 0]

I think that the draw is that it sounds so good to so many people who have been affected by addiction. But I doubt that in reality the answer is so easy. It rarely is. As far as negative effects....one would be hard-pressed to show that there are none. Using drugs is one of the stupid things some people like to do and other people like to do a lot.

linz

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A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[mr2mk1g 10]

I'm dead against this, and from the scuttlebutt there was about this a month ago it's simply never going to happen. At least not in the next decade - no public support and difficult ethical issues.

I wonder what people think about the separate issues. How about we try to separate them out? What if the vaccine was in relation to cigarettes only? What if all kids were vaccinated against starting smoking?

I don't expect many people to change their minds on that basis only - but it does at least force people to consider only the ethical issues and to ignore the practical issues such as impacting on the proper use of opiates.

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"I don't expect many people to change their minds on that basis only - but it does at least force people to consider only the ethical issues and to ignore the practical issues such as impacting on the proper use of opiates."

Vacillation over vaccination?

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He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

[gmanpilot 0]

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Some people have sex addictions. By your rationale, why not?

I'm no biochemist, so I don't know the pharmacology behind the vaccine, but I'm pretty sure there is a difference in enjoying alcohol or sex, and being addicted to it. I think the researchers are targeting the addictive nature/chemistry of the individual, not the pain relieving effect of morphine.

So to answer your question, if the vaccine would level the playing field for those with an addictive brain chemistry and not affect others, I think it's a pretty good idea.

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-There's always free cheese in a mouse trap.

[mr2mk1g 10]

no that’s not what they're doing. They are simply blocking the brains receptors to specific chemicals - such as nicotine or cocaine. Its got nothing to do with altering whether or not you are prone to addiction.

[Lindsey 0]

Noone has ever found any specific brain chemistry to pin addiction on. We know the actions of individual drugs, but there's simply no target for "addiction" in the broader sense. Maybe it's there somewhere, but we don't know what it is. That's my question about the pharmacology of some vaccine like this. I don't think it's realistic.

Even if it's targeting individual receptors....those receptors are there for other reasons than for the pleasure that drugs bring. I wouldn't want mine blocked. Also....various drugs are active a various receptor sites.....again, too broad to target a single vaccine to.

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A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[soilman 0]

I don't think they are blocking the receptors in the brain (and elsewhere); the article appears to be gone, but i seem to recall reading that the micro-organisms are going to intefere with the drug itself, decomposing it sufficiently, metabolizing it (the way the liver does) so that active drug or active early breakdown products never get to the brain. With opioids this wouldl mean that they will not cause euphoria, and also they will not cause analgesia. Instead of waiting for the drug to pass thru the liver a few time, the chemicals produced by the viruses, produced by the viral infection that they have infected you with, will be metabolizing the drug as soon as it gets into your blood. This will essentially mean, the way to get high is to take about 10 times as much.

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Animal husbandry may not be necessary. We can maintain soil quality, for plant husbandry, with green manures and cover crops.

[gmanpilot 0]

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Noone has ever found any specific brain chemistry to pin addiction on....but there's simply no target for "addiction" in the broader sense.....That's my question about the pharmacology of some vaccine like this. I don't think it's realistic.

Well then the shot is not a vaccine at all. I guess it's a treatment. A vaccine would render the individual immune to the pathology/diseade of addiction, as opposed to negating the effect of the substance. How very Churchillian to call it a vaccine.

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-There's always free cheese in a mouse trap.

[skydivingfool 0]

http://www.namiscc.org/Research/2002/AddictionVaccines.htm

The shot is a vaccine and should only target specific drug substances. It is possible to tailor the antibodies such that they bind selectively. So in theory you could take two compounds which have very similar structures, say morphine and heroin, and be able to vaccinate against heroin but still be able to utilize the benefits of morphine. Likewise this therapy should not affect adrenaline highs, sex, etc. etc. Although I still don't think that vaccinating kids in this case is a good idea.