Posted on 07/25/2004 4:42:00 PM PDT by aculeus
A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by British ministers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
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.
The Department of Trade and Industry has set up a special project to investigate ways of using new scientific breakthroughs to combat drug and nicotine addiction.
A national anti-drug immunisation scheme is one of the proposals being put forward by the Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs project, an expert committee of scientists appointed by the Government earlier this year.
Professor David Nutt, a leading government drugs adviser who sits on the committee, told the IoS that anti-drug vaccines for children are likely to be among the panel's recommendations when it reports next March.
Professor Nutt, head of psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol and a senior member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said: "People could be vaccinated against drugs at birth as you are against measles. You could say cocaine is more dangerous than measles, for example. It is important that there is a debate on this issue. This is a huge topic - addiction and smoking are major causes of premature death."
According to the Government's own figures, the cost of drug addiction - through related crime and health problems - to the economy is £12bn a year. There is a strong incentive for the Government to find new ways to halt spiralling addiction.
Last week, the IoS revealed that cocaine use had trebled in Britain with increasing numbers of users switching to highly addictive crack cocaine.
Scientists are already conducting trials for drugs that can be used by doctors to vaccinate against cocaine, heroin and nicotine addiction.
Xenova, the British biotechnology firm, has carried out trials on an anti-cocaine vaccine which showed that 58 per cent of patients remained cocaine-free after three months.
Meanwhile, experts at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, have developed a super-virus, harmless to humans, which produces proteins that can block or reduce the effects of cocaine.
The team at Scripps tested the virus on rats by injecting it into their noses twice a day for three days. On the fourth day, the rats were given a shot of cocaine. The researchers found that cocaine had more effect on the rats not injected with the virus than those that were.
Scientists hope the virus will help stop the cravings experienced by cocaine users for the drug by blocking the pleasure they normally associate with cocaine.
This anti-drug medication is expected to be available to users within the next two years in the form of a nasal spray.
Proposals to introduce a national anti-drug vaccination programme have been greeted with a cautious welcome by MPs and experts.
Ian Gibson, head of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, said the Government would have to carry out public consultation.
"There is no reason to think this would not be a starter or beneficial," said Dr Gibson, Labour MP for Norwich North.
"But ... proper consultation with the public needs to happen well in advance."
David Hinchliffe, chairman of the Commons Health Committee and Labour MP for Wakefield, said: "This could have a huge impact on society in terms of preventing damage to others and dealing with addicts. [But] the ethical perspective does need to be looked at closely."
The National Treatment Agency, which manages drug-addiction programmes, welcomed any new ways of treating addiction but said there was no "magic bullet".
- INDEPENDENT
I may be wrong, but I think they have only found a way to take the high out of drugs.
I say try it with addicts and see if it makes rehab more effective.
like the line in fiddler on the roof: may the good Lord bless and keep the Czar... far away from us!
You mean like heroin?
Let's not forget that when heroin came out science pushed it as the cure for opium addiction.
This seems to happen over and over again, yet we always hear about the new and improved cure for one addiction or another.
Addiction is part of the human condition, that is a simple fact of life. Many use alcohol without danger to themselves or others. The same is true of heroin or any other substance.
More murders and suicides are caused by people addicted to love than all legal and illegal substances combined. To cure addiction, you must destroy that which makes us human.
Do you really want to do that?
I think this is an immunization of sorts.
When was heroin used as an immunization exactly, that is news to me?
Of sorts? This is Frankenstein science of the same sort practiced by Hitler's Gestapo. Why not just gas the babies of undesireables and be done with it?
Heroin was developed as an antidote to opium addiction.
My point is that everytime we are told that a new cure for addiction has been found, it turns out to be a bigger problem than the original addiction.
If you're going to argue the benefits of anti addiction you should do your own research. Just Google drugs and 1912. That's a good starting point. Read the congressional testimony on the Marijuana Tax Act, 1934.
Conservatives opposed the Marijuana Tax Act. The American Medical Association opposed the Marijuana Tax Act. Every legitimate scientist in the country opposed the Marijuana Tax Act. It was pushed through over the objections of every Republican in congress as part of FDR's socialist program to save the downtrodden masses from the depression.
Only after the arrest of thousands of doctors across the country did the AMA make a deal with the Democrats to support the drug laws.
You will also read in the congressional testimony the promise that the drug act would not be used to prosecute anyone who grew and consumed their own marijuana. This was just a tax on commercial growers who sold across state lines.
In the drug act of 1912 you will read that the statistics used to show an opium addiction problem was taken from the records of civil war veterens, who did have a high addiction rate. Those statistics were outdated at the time they were used and just as phony as statistics used today.
Drug prohibition is a way for government to derive a perpetual income from the taxpayer. This war has been waged since 1912 and drug use has not declined at all even though this war has grown into the biggest war in human history.
Now, you want to let them play with the human brain?
In the movie, Equilibrium (2002), society is kept in check by keeping individuals' emotions in check, and this is done by a daily injection of a drug that deadens one's ability to feel any sort of emotion.
This is basically what these folks are proposing with this "vaccine" against addiction.
"O brave new world, That has such people in't!" (The Tempest)
Sorry, I forgot to add the Heroin info you asked for in my reply.
Heroin and Aspirin were two wonder drugs introduced by Bayer in 1898. According to Bayer, Heroin is ten times more effective as a cough medicine than Codeine, but has only a tenth of its toxic effects. It is also more effective than morphine as a painkiller. It is safe. It isn't habit forming. By 1914 Heroin was the drug of choice for cough
remedies and the treatment of opium and morphine addiction.
Heroin did not become one of the evil drugs until our first drug czar claimed it was being used, along with cocaine, by depraved black jazz musicians to seduce pretty young white girls.
Marijuana, it was claimed, was being used by dpraved Mexican wetbacks to seduce pretty young white girls.
The whole War on Drugs is based on the seduction of pretty young white girls. Even today, we see the pretty young white girls on TV ads telling us about the horrors of drug abuse.
The solution is simple. If we really want to get rid of drugs, lock up all pretty young white girls!
I don't know about heroine being non-addictive. I've seen folks going through heroine withdrawals, and it ain't a pretty sight.
I agree with you. They sold it as non addictive and a cure for addiction.
Now we have methadone as the cure for heroin addiction. They sold it to us as the ultimate anti addictive drug. It takes away the high of heroin but cures the craving.
After putting it into use we find that methadone itself is so addictive that once started it can't be stopped.
Heroin addiction is comparable to nicotine addiction. Treating addicts was more successful before methadone.
Again we were fed a lie, and bought it hook, line and sinker. Those using methadone now will be using it for the rest of their lives, and it costs a hell of a lot more than heroin. The only benefit to methadone treatment is to the drug companies that manufacture it and the doctors who push it.
Illegal hard drug use is such a small percentage of the population that it should be treated by your local md. We just don't need to be playing around with the design of the human brain.
Most people in rehab have an alcohol problem. Sure they may use heroin or some other drug, but their problem is alcohol. We don't hear that, because because the government makes more money from the fear of drug abuse.
Marijuana is pushed as a dangerous drug because they need it to keep the drug statistics high. Taxpayers would not spend the huge sums that they do now on the few real addicts we have.
Drug laws protect drug dealers, increase violent crime and steal freedom. When you send that non violent drug addict you despise to prison, he returns as the violent criminal you fear. This is insanity.
That being said, I see nothing wrong with voluntarily giving to charities to cover rehab for drug addicts, I just don't think I should be coerced to do so.
I agree with you.
Let addicts pay for their own drugs.
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