Texas Researchers Working On Cocaine Vaccine

phrozen said:
Why? Because it's a harmful activity? Well, the same could be said about every preventable cause of death then. That ultimately be a huge mistake.
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or ultimately be a turning point in human gene change
 
Ham-milton said:
I'm pretty certain that they wouldn't dare create a vaccine against amphetamines. They have too much similarity to neurotransmitters. It would be a really quick way to give someone parkinson's.

However, if they were able to, meth, amphetamine and cathinone derivatives would probably all fall prey.

I can't see it being *that* selective.

edit: pastorius- I don't know about you, but I can't think of a case where amphetamines not working would be capable "threatening" anyone's life.

And it would likely be possible to create an opiate vaccine that wouldn't cause a problem later on. Even assuming, say, a molecule varying 20% either way (Technically, that means nothing, but I think you know what I'm talking about), blocking morphine-type opiates and oids, you'd still have the fentanyl and pethidine types.
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I am not sure, I think that amphetamines are used in things other than ADD and ADHD, but i am by no means an MD, so i may be wrong. Opiates i assumed wouldnt be vaccinated against due to the medical benefits, but as you pointed out it maybe possible to use other painkillers. Whatever, i believe that it wouldn't be done, i dont think pharmaceutical companies would be willing to let it.
 
Damn! Nobody wanted to take a stab at my hypothetical? One more shameless plug for answers to my hypothetical:

- new opiate is released by underground labs
- new opiate is *slightly* more enjoyable than heroin (comparable methods of use, cost, etc)
- new opiate is magnitudes worse than heroin in terms of: bodily damage, possibility of overdose, and a ridiculously higher likelihood of addiction. To take it further, 80% of those who use this new substance ONE time will likely become strongly addicted.
- lifetime length vaccine is introduced for this new drug.


Would you take this vaccine yourself? Would you give it to your child/ren? <<presume this vaccine works for life from the day taken, is 1 single shot, and 100% safe w/ ZERO side effects>>
 
^nope still individual choice. i wouldnt be tempted by such a nasty chemical (it would be like huffing duster) and doing that to my kids would not go well with my ideals of 'cognitive liberty'. maybe we could be wrong about the chemical, and if we vaccinate everyone, no one will know its potential
 
CloudyHazeD said:
I dont see how this is really treating the addiction, it's just preventing the high.
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its the difference between 'treatment' and 'cure'

it doesnt cure the addiction, but it 'treats' it by preventing someone from getting high so the theory is eventually they wont crave the drug

theres so many drugs, though, it'd take hundreds of years to get vaccines for all of them, and by that time, we'd have thousands more drugs
 
phrozen said:
Why? Because it's a harmful activity? Well, the same could be said about every preventable cause of death then. That ultimately be a huge mistake.
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Someone needs to find a way of countering this issue without resorting to utilizing the slippery slope fallacy. It really isn't a valid counter argument. Just my two cents.
 
bingalpaws said:
(((further hypothetical, not too important. Given how I feel on this subject, I'd never ever let my kid have one of these shots. I'd imagine many here would feel the same, but let me ask you this. What if tomorrow there was a new recreational drug, some weird ass opiate. This opiate *barely* got you higher than heroin, I mean it did get you a little higher, but barely. No big difference. However, this new opiate happens to have 100X the side effect profile in terms of gi issues, overdose potential, etc. Also, it's got easily 100X the addiction profile of heroin. So it's really got nothing more recreational to offer than heroin, but a whole lot more negatives. And there's a vaccine specfically for this new opiate. And you have a kid - would you give the vaccine? )))
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That's not where I thought you were going with this. I thought your hypothetical was going to deal with new and less safe recreational drugs being developed IN RESPONSE TO the majority of people having been vaccinated against the ones we see now. With that in mind, I'm beginning to see the slippery slope you're talking about.

It seems to be a case of the devil you know vs. the devil you don't. We know how to deal with addicts of the addictive chemicals we have now. We don't know what people will turn to or develop in their absence. Will we eventually be handing out a battery of vaccines for an ever-growing list of hundreds of as-yet uninvented super drugs, which grows each time those who seek to beat the system invent a new chemical that circumvents all the blocks already put up? That kind of arms race sounds like an immense waste of resources and an immense amount of unnecessary tinkering with the human body.
 
I was actually trying to have it both ways, that was all from a conversation on the subject that went off on a tangent lol. Both the premise that, regardless of how many vaccines were created and how safe/effective they were, <illicit> manufacturers would always be one step ahead (see research chems, "clear" steroids in national sports, prohormones for the regular bodybuilder, etc), and further on the hypothetical idea of whether or not ANY vaccination of this kind is okay to give on ethical grounds. I do not believe so and would NOT vaccinate my kid against that mythical opiate I had mentioned - it's not my place to do so, it's my place to make him/her smart enough to make the right choice when the time comes.
 
About it <more and more vaccines> being a waste, I've gotta say that, at first, I doubt it would be. Allow me to play anti-drug warrior for a moment. Why would I go after a single cartel, or a bunch of coca fields, when I know what's gonna happen a few months later? I know new fields will have taken their place, and new cartels will have moved in - hell I've done this before and when I dismantled the biggest one (escobar), all of a sudden I made the industry fragment into 'microcartels', it made it even harder to combat the drug scourge. However, I've begun to think that, since public campaigns to reduce demand do not work, and private campaigns to take down fields/traffickers don't work, that I can fight this war a different way - make the end customers inable to get high. The difficulty is only in creating the vaccines, they would practically sell themselves to a LARGE amount of people. As a drug warrior, I'd see this the same way many drug guerillas see fent analogues - as something with ridiculous potential to change the way the entire game is played.

Dunno, maybe I'm giving too much validity to the potential safety/efficacy of these vaccines, but is anyone really positive these couldn't be viable 'cures' within 10-15 years? And screw any slippery slope hypotheticals, what if just for cocaine? It'd be one helluvan approach to the 'colombia problem'.
 
Roger&Me said:
Someone needs to find a way of countering this issue without resorting to utilizing the slippery slope fallacy. It really isn't a valid counter argument. Just my two cents.
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The slippery slope argument is valid when talking about drugs. It's been displayed by the gov't time and time again. And it will continue to be used.
 
^^^ Yeah srsly, if anyone has seen the swat team tactics and lion-on-the-prowl type joy New Jersey LEOs take in turning someone's life upside down for possessing an 8th of weed, you'd see that the slippery slope is very much in effect.

oh trust me bing, I'm not arguing with you that it's unlikely to be tried, especially for bigger, more unique, more low-dose, and more receptor specific molecules. I'm just imagining ruefully the absurd arms race of vaccines and designer drugs that would ensue.

Once it reaches the point where this tab I picked up at a party as 'LSD' could actually be one of about 20 analogue compounds, running the gamut of side effects and safety profiles, and almost all of which I'm likely to have been sneakily given a vaccine against, I think that might be my cue to quit drugs, cut my hair, and get a desk job.

Maybe not though we'll see. ;)
 
I would not want to immune myself to these drugs. What if I need coke/meth/opiates(for sure)/weed medicinally. These are useful drugs and drugs of abuse. I don't wana lose the usefulness out of them. Then again, I am not addicted to coke.
 
what's the importance of cocaine in medicine? I can see it for the other categories but a lil unclear on coke..
 
^
It's a local anesthetic. It's still used in the US, I think for rhinoplasty and shit like that. That's why it's a CII.

I'm not sure why they use coke instead of others though...
 
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