Vaccines against addictive drugs push forward despite past failures
cen.acs.org
cen.acs.org
So resistance to anesthesia could mean no surgery beyond the most basic ones.
There are a lot of options for anaesthesia, and many of them are not opioids. For example, there is a whole set of halogenated ethers like sevoflurane and isoflurane (the most typical inhaled anesthetics). Their chemical structures and mechanisms of action are very different from opioids, so the vaccine-produced antibodies would not recognise or react with them. This is true for many of the other options (benzos, ketamine, even xenon gas).
That said, opioids are useful. They are very good analgesics (pain relievers) and can be used as anesthesia in certain situations, like cardiovascular patients. However, for most people in most situations, there are other non-opioid options.
Opiates are painkillers, anesthetic are a different beast.
Simplistic yes, but such a drug could prevent a lot of harm.
Considering how much the mainstream dialogue is about illicit drugs its probably time to start talking about the far more common addictions and associated problems.
Do you have a source for that please? Other countries who don't have an opioid crisis don't prescribe opioids for long term pain as much, but continue to prescribe opioids for acute pain, including surgery.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...
> Conclusions and Relevance - New persistent opioid use after surgery is common and is not significantly different between minor and major surgical procedures but rather associated with behavioral and pain disorders.
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/09/26/1132719/0/...
> Nearly 3 million individuals who had surgery in 2016 became persistent opioid users, continuing to take opioids three to six months after their procedure
The vaccination approach, even if it's unlikely to succeed, I certainly hope that it does, as every opioid addict I've known has ended up in a battle that never actually stops. It becomes a life-long struggle.
Also, opiate receptors serve a purpose in pain relief and feeling pleasure when the brain secretes endorphins. The article doesn’t cover whether endorphins will trigger the immune response in people who have been modified by the vaccine.
Naltrexone is essentially a vaccine against both opioids and and alcohol. My recovered-alcoholic friend found that Naltrexone eliminated her ability to consume large amounts of alcohol. But she drank "to make it all go away", and Naltrexone didn't provide any relief for her emotional problems. She took herself off Naltrexone and drank herself into a 2-year prison sentence for her 3rd DUI. She tried to stay sober after getting released, but was unsuccessful because of her anger at her ex-husband (which I somewhat helped her release).
Gabor Maté [0] says that virtually 100% of his most-hopeless drug addict patients had experienced "adverse childhood experiences".
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16023802
Last month I met "Henry" - our mutual friend said he was trying to get off "Black" (black tar heroin). A while later Henry tagged along with us... Mutual friend disappeared for a bit. Henry told me how scared he was of Black... That he'd once gone to Mexico with his family, thought he took enough to get him through the week, but started to go into withdrawal at the end of the trip.
He also said how much he loves G (meth amphetamine), and that he'd tried to find some that day, but was unsuccessful. He then said, "A junky like me has to shoot something...", and said he'd used Black in the Taco Bell bathroom that afternoon, shortly before getting in my car.
I told him I thought my friend (whom I've mentioned here before) was predisposed to addiction on account of her being adopted. Henry immediately said that he was adopted -- that he was found in a dumpster at 4 months old, screaming his little heart out.
> But people struggling with addiction to cocaine or stimulants such as methamphetamine don’t have treatment options like these. They don’t exist.
I've read some studies that found that Naltrexone is also helpful for reducing people's stimulant use, and that the anti-psychotics (anti-dopamine drugs) cause people to use more cocaine/amphetamine.
Really there's no need for developing "vaccines" for "addictive drugs" - we have tools (naltrexone, the MAOIs, etc) that work well enough to address the reasons that people self-medicate with substances that cause long-term harm. Doctors just need to consider the full conditions of the person who can't limit their use of addictive substances to "recreation".
It would also help to stop teaching addicts to be helpless in jail.
This week I finally found the rest of a quote about 'feeling safe' that I've referenced for years [1]. Someone had asked about "ego" - the response was, "It's very important to develop an ego. When a person feels safe, the false-ego goes away."
Something else I'd point out is that science often goes through the trouble of finding paliative solutions rather than developing a fundamental understanding of the root causes.
If you don't tackle the root causes of addiction, they'll respawn identically or in the form of other addictions, in my opinion.
Re. your quote about the ego, I didn't quite get its meaning. Can you elaborate on it?
It's much harder to fund "we have to completely rework our public health infrastructure" (in the US, at least), then "We can help save these lives in <insert relatively short timeframe>".
Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote An American Sickness about this phenomenon. This essay is a good preview: How Economic Incentives have Created our Dysfunctional US Medical Market - https://medium.com/@RosenthalHealth/how-economic-incentives-...
It might be true if there was only one pharma company, but surely most companies would prefer that you buy their one-time cure than become a lifetime customer of their competitors. Diabetes is a particularly bad example because an ungodly amount of time and money has been spent trying to protect, repair, or regrow beta cells. Despite this, we have made very little progress. However, Accu-Chek is not bribing researchers to tank their experiments in the hopes of selling more test strips. The problem is that biology is absurdly complex and messy.
Plus, we have a nice counter-example. Until recently, patients with Hepatitis C were treated with a long course of interferon (6 months to a year), with relatively mixed results and fairly nasty side effects. About 50% of patients did not clear the virus, and needed liver transplants.
In 2013-4, Gilead got approval for sofosbuvir, which needs to be taken for only 12 weeks, has a much higher cure rate, and more mild side effects. To be fair, it is eye-wateringly expensive, especially in the US, but that's one way to make 'cures' work.
Before the middle of the 20th century, linseed oil and soybean oil were drying oils that were used to make stain and paint. When the paint producers figured out how to make paint from petroleum, the seed oil industry rebranded their product as "vegetable oil".
Why this isn't the focus, and instead people receive insulin, escapes my grasp.
I think the "false ego" is when a person creates a sort of 'personality' that isn't based on reality. These are the people who are always bluffing/lying about their situation. In their world they make lots of money, they can kick your ass, etc.
When a person starts to "feel safe" (financially/emotionally/etc), their need to create an alternate-presentation ("false ego") goes away.
Another friend was picked on as a child. She was always fighting with everyone... Someone said that "fighting" was how she managed to survive her childhood. When she'd grown up fighting didn't help her anymore. She's since trained in martial arts, has enough of a rainy-day fund to get her through a pinch, and is making good progress on not having to fight with everyone all the time. (edit: "feeling safe" allows her to not have to fight with people.)
How on earth does that follow? Adoption, in and of itself, is not an "adverse childhood experience". You seem to be equating it with abuse, which it clearly isn't.
Some children are fine after getting adopted. Others have issues. For example, the adoptive parents of the recent Florida school shooter tried to get their adopted son help, but he never did well, and apparently completely fell apart after his adopted mother passed away.
Also, I've had a pretty amazing childhood with awesome parents. I still became addicted to cocaine a few times and I've done tons of drugs since my teens up to a couple years ago.