Cocaine Vaccine Leads Addicts to Take Ten Times More Cocaine
January 7th, 2010A novel way of boosting demand?
Via: Popular Science:
Over the last decade, the advances in neuroscience that led doctors to view addiction as a disease, rather than a desire or personal failing, raised the natural question of whether or not addicts could be vaccinated against drug use as if it were a virus. While the theory remains valid, the recent clinical trial of one of those vaccines, called TA-CD, highlights the complexity of the issue.
TA-CD works by preventing cocaine from entering the brain, thus stopping the user from getting high. It does not, however, stop cravings, leading some test participants who received the vaccine to take 10 times as much cocaine in the hopes of overriding the vaccine and getting high, or to bankrupt themselves while trying to do so.
According to the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, some participants in the study bumped more yeyo than the researchers conducting the study had every seen before. Others lost all their money buying one cut of charlie after another in the vain hopes of finding a package that actually got them high.
Amazingly, none of the test subjects overdosed.
Of the 58 subjects who received the vaccine, only 11 managed to stay off of the Bolivian marching powder for more than half of the time they participated in the study.
Vaccine Creators: “Whoops!”
On the other hand, it is well-known that the powers that be do not want to “cure” addicts, at least not the vast majority of them. Hence, most attempts at treatment suck and are designed to protract the addiction process.
William S. Burroughs, no less the dean of heroin addiction, writes about this in “The Job” when he describes how the only way he managed to kick heroin, was by going to England for an apomorphine treatment, a remedy rarely if ever prescribed in the U.S., which used inferior methods that produced high relapse rates.
It seems that part of the enmity between “Science” and Religion includes the former’s need to see everything in amoral terms. Thus, when we’re all reduced to statistical data, things like the Holocaust won’t seem bad at all — “bad” and “good” being primitive, outmoded ideas.
i just can’t click through to the Popular Science (sic) website. just one step too far for me. i mean, “view addiction as a disease, rather than a desire or personal failing” this is dross of the highest order. since when has addiction been viewed by anyone with half a brain still funtioning as “desire or personal failing”? arghhh. addiction is a pathological relationship or dependence, physical or psychological. it usually involves the release of certain chemicals in the brain. but not always. human addictive behaviour is at the root of most problems on this planet. and they suggest a vaccine? oh, ffs, that is pathetic. as i said, popsci, will not go there.