Human Trials Of Anti-Smoking Vaccine Begin

Makarand writes "A Nicotine vaccine that may help smokers to quit has made it to human trials. The vaccine is administered as a series of eight shots -- patients receive two shots per visit during four different visits. The vaccine works by stimulating the human immune system to produce antibodies that bind with the nicotine molecules to form a larger complex molecule which cannot pass through the blood/brain barrier to get into the brain. As a result smokers will not feel the 'high' from the cigarettes they light up and lose interest in smoking. Preliminary studies have shown that this vaccine is safe in humans." (Each link goes to a slightly different version of the same wire story.)

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Don't Start

[Chasuk]

Off-topic rant BEGINS

I'll be honest, I don't care how many people smoke, or how much death or suffering it causes (second-hand smoking deaths are grossly exaggerated if you read the current research about it). I've loved very few people who was actually stupid enough to start.

If you are such a fucking moron that you start smoking, then you will eventually reduce the surface population by one smoker, and my clothes won't stink as much when I go to the club. I just hope that it happens before they have children.

Think about it: a person adopts a habit that reduces his lifespan, makes his clothes stink, his breath bad, and his teeth yellow, just to be cool or tough? Are such shallow cretins really contributors to the gene pool, anyway? Youth isn't an excuse. If it was, we would all be smokers. But the non-cretinous teens never start smoking. "I like smoking" isn't an excuse either: if it were discovered tomorrow that 350,000 people a year died from eating bananas, bananas would rot on the shelves, and only the suicidal would start eating bananas.

My own children (both late teens) have never smoked, nor have any of their friends. When I expressed surprise at this recently, they both said to me, hurt: "You mean you think we would hang around with losers?"

Yielding to the temptation to smoke is a personality defect that usually means you have other, more striking defects which eliminate you from my list of potential friends, anyway. It shouts to me "I am weak" or "I am an unthinking moron" so loudly that you will never become more than a tolerated acquaintance.

Yes, this is a troll, except that I believe everything that I have typed.

For what it's worth, I don't think the law should ban smoking anywhere. It is the right of every smoker to be a stupid fuck. I just won't go to any restaurant that allows smoking, and let my dollars set their customer-smoking policy.

Off-topic rant FINISHES