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Vaccinated Against Vices?
Smoke Me A Kipper writes "The Independent is reporting that the latest UK government sponsored quango, charged with looking at the problems of drug abuse, is to recommend a national anti-addiction 'vaccination' scheme. Apparantly, trials are already in progress. No details as to whether it would be mandatory. Personally I find such an idea utterly shocking - what happens when you find yourself injured in later life and morphine based painkillers no longer work? I wouldn't be surprised to find existing phamaceutical companies excited by this, having to replace cheap drugs with something new, which they can patent and control."
The Europeans have a much more enlightned view of drugs. For example, in europe you can get a pain killer called "Diamorphine", in the us that same painkiller is illegal because it is chemically the same as heroin. Eurpoean diamorphine is manufactured under controlled conditions and is as safe as any other pain killer. American heroin is made in dirty warehouses and contains so many impurities that you are more likely to die from the introduction of arthropod parts into your blood stream than you are to die from overdosing on diamorphine.
I typically sing the tune priaising the greatness of my country, but when it comes to drug policy, my country has it ass backwards.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
How about they just give all the children a shot of sugar water and then say that they are "vaccinated"? Then they'd never try drugs because there'd be no point (or so they'd think).
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Yeah, no shit! And higher doses of coke are supposed to be better for you, are they?
Couldn't you still be chemically addicted, even without getting the high? I'm sure lots of drug abusers want to stop, but they can't. However, it may give people a reason not to start because there really is no incentive.
But from the perspective of a person that has been addicted to a particular substance, this could be a life saver.
Unless you have experienced a physical/mental addiction you can't comprehend the type of strain that the person and their families experience. To be able to have something that will reduce/stop the urge could save many people alot of stress and sadness, which usually comes with drug addiction.
I suspect there is some shoddy reporting going on here with the reporter thinking 'hmmm, immunisation, this must be a childhood thing.
You could perhaps posit reasons why it would be most effective during childhood - blocking developmental pathways etc., but there is no real suggestion in the few reported facts that this is the case... the rats tested weren't day-old rats as far as we know, and the affects were seen in a few days.
Sadly then, there is not enough to go on in the report, to know for sure whether it would have to be a childhood immunisation.
It's certainly a nice little earner for the companies who'll be paid to produce the drugs. Probably makes more sense to try to make society a better place so people don't feel the need to take heroin and crack, though. Anything which makes it more likely that people will use alcohol instead of other drugs can only have a detrimental effect on society.
In the UK, there have already been a number of serious measles epidemics (with attendant deaths) because parents are overplaying the risk of the MMR vaccine. Now, it seems to me that nicotine addiction, while serious, can be avoided in a manner that measles exposure cannot. Mass vaccinations against heroin have marginal utility for the vast majority of recipients, while exposing those same recipients to any number of side-effects.
Hi - a good friend of mine has just finished her doctoral thesis in neuroscience, specializing in addiction in particular. It is interesting that you can vaccinate against against a given drug, but the author of this thread is right - it is pretty appalling, because although you can block the receptors for a given neurotransmitter, that receptor is used by your body for 'normal' highs and lows. I think this is perhaps a good idea for people with heroin addictions already, but as a preventative measure it could have a very debilatating effect on people's lifestyle. As an interesting aside, my neuroscientist doctor friend was able to find correlations between all kinds of addiction (not just physical, but addictions such as gambling and such too). Apparently certain people have a significantly stronger propensity for addiction than others. It may then be no surprise that addictions have a tendancy to run in families. This kind of research is more useful, IMHO, as you can identify people who are likely to end up with an addition before it happens, and provide counseling to make them understand the risks ahead of time. Drug addictions may be physical, but they always have a social element too - it's best to treat the cause rather than the symptom, or the problems come out in other ways anyway.
if it feels good, it must be bad. And we ( as in the government, religion, society ) have the right to tell you what to do, even in the privacy of your own home or head.
I understand the issue of addiction, and the problems that addiction poses to society. This is one way of addressing it, but it is a morally dubious one. It removes the essentials of choice, which is a prime factor in what makes us human. It is also the cornerstone of a lot of religious tenets, which will lead once again to the unwashed christian masses sponsoring something that goes directly against their religious beliefs ( like christians who support the death penalty, where's the "thou shalt not kill" commandment again? ). So, rather than addressing the problem of addiction with personal help ( which is a morally unquestionable stance - you want help, we'll give it to you ), and treating the attendant problems ( crime - legalize drugs, diseases - re-instate needle exchange programs and allow sex ed to be taught in schools ) in a humane and efficient manner, we will embark down the slippery slope that "vaccines" for this stuff offer.
How long after a vaccine for drugs if implemented, will we have a vaccine for violence? And how long after that will we all be mindless zombies, in a perfect semblance of "health", all marching to the beat of our corporate/religious masters? That is a state worse than 1984. 1984 was about manipulation and control. We're already there to a degree ( watched the news lately? In multiple countries? They are fucking lying to us, so blatantly in many cases that it will blow your top to actually dig into the facts ), but at least when you're being manipulated, you can be awakened. What happens when you're vaccinated or genetically altered to the point where you can't get high, can't feel love, anger, pain, joy, any of the things that make us human? Can't choose between right or wrong? I would rather die myself.
And before anyone gets on my case about not understanding the problem, understand that I do. I've been strung out. Badly. I spent the better part of a decade putting cocaine, speed, and heroin in my arms, nose, and lungs. But I also understand that a lot of drugs have their uses. Acid won't ruin your life ( unless you're stupid enough to take way too much, but tylenol will do that as well ). Everyone should have one good trip in their life. It's fun and teaches you a lot about yourself. Cocaine has a lot of useful medicinal properties, but as a recreational drug it's useless and far too destructive. Alcohol is one most addictive and destructive drugs around, yet it's legal almost everywhere in the world. Etc. - they're just chemicals people.
What's scary is how we react to the issues that come up because of these chemicals. If it weren't drugs, it would be something else that exposes the weaknesses in our moral logic. And it is ultimately an issue of morality. Not the morality that all these soapbox baptist neocon preachers go on about, but actual human morality that rises out of ability to reason. What the Western world was based on.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
Heroin is very much chemically addictive.. where did you hear that it wasn't?
Physically, heroin addiction IS morphine addiction. Heroin is turned into morphine in the brain. As far as your neuroreceptors are concerned, it IS morphine.
Heroin is just a more effective way to get the morphine to the brain.
As with most drugs of abuse, the psychological addiction is the one that really gets you... but don't kid yourself. Heroin is VERY physically addictive.. just like morphine.
Each of these measures, from MMR to this new "vaccination" to the compulsion to have a number applied to you and your offspring are all designed by companies who wish to make a profit from the processing of individuals in the UK.
It is a scandal, no two ways about it. The UK Independence Party however, is posing a real threat to these proposals. It is by no means over yet.
Take away "sex" addiction and you might take away one of the foundations of pair bonding. Take away the "high" you get from opiates and you might remove the good feeling you get from exercise as well as the body's defense against pain. Remove the addiction of gambling and you might have people unwilling to take any chance at all.
Mother Nature has built-in very specific structures for reward, and while they might be ant-survival in certain settings -- the desire for large amounts of food, for example -- the research should be to allow conscious control rather than the reduction or elimination of the reward aspect.
If they really wanted to get rid of a lot of crime and health problems and save the world billions of dollars, here's what they should do:
Do exactly the opposite of what they're doing now. Concede that drugs can never be eliminated and instead work towards negating all the negative aspects of drugs one by one.
Research safe and approved alternatives that would provide the desired good feeling without the side effects or the addictiveness. Pop a pill in the evening, but be up for work next morning without a hangover. Beats getting wasted at the bar.
Make the stuff relatively cheap, driving the black market and oranized crime out of the drug business.
The idea is to provide a safe and supervised alternative. By supervised I mean the stuff shouldn't be provided to minors or lunatics. There should be heavy penalties for driving while under influence and/or technical solutions to make it impossible. For instance, in some places in Europe they've installed alcohol-locks in cars that seem to work pretty well.
Why it will never happen in the US:
- The tobacca and alcohol lobby would bury anyone who tried to push it.
- Unfortunately for a lot of people this sort of pragmatic solution is unacceptable. It's not about eliminating crime or saving lives, it's about legislating (their) morality.
- Once you've spent billions on something stupid it's hard to pull the plug and admit defeat. Those who've worked in IT sees this every day, some stupid project is beyond all salvation and everybody knows it but more money is being inject solely because a shitload has already been spent.
It's like deja vu all over again.
Amen. I am not sure why so many look to the government to "solve all that ails us". Not only does this strip away rights, it forces entire populations to participate in an experiment. Not only will persons who are at high risk of being addicted be affected, but the vast majority of participants would never have tried those drugs or become addicts, but still forced by government regulations, to share the same risk.
I am not sure how the UK treats "required immunizations", but we have a little choice in the US, from home schooling to waivers for "religious reasons", although most would not have enough information to do so. This strikes me in the same vein as "Big Brother", since the patented 'viruses' that you would have to be injected with are not exactly open source, but are instead proprietary property of some Drug Company(tm) used under the direction of the Federal Government, all in the name of what is best for us.
If that doesn't worry the shit out of you, then there is no hope for any of us.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
1. Measles are transmitted via a virus vs. cocaine which is self inflicted.
2. When you vaccinated a certain percantage of the population the immunisation of the potential transmitters make it almost impossible for the virus to spread. Cocaine will spread by dealers regardless of other cocaine users. You need a measle infected or virus infected person to spread measles, you don't need a cocaine user to spread cocaine. The only way to ensure removal of a cocaine market would be to enforce a very high vaccination rate. And even then you are not guarantted any effect. It will take atleast 25 years with vaccination before one will now how well it works.
3. A measle vaccination guarantees that something like 99.5& of those vaccinated won't get measles. How will the coacaine vaccination deal with new synthetic cocaine variants?
4. Ultimatly people chooses to use cocaine (at least the first time) because of the stimulation, if one could neutralize cocaine people will find other drugs.
5. Last time I check measles causes some 800000 deaths each year (yes that is eight-hundred thousand). And that is with extensive vaccination programs in the western world and several campaigns in the third world. Cocaine is not even close.
And the concept of "preamature death" is a bit extended and diffuse. Before the medics and the health system concentrated on diseases randomly striking people and it classified those deaths as "premature deaths". But now they also (correctly) focus on more or less self inflicted diseases. How long should the society go in order to protect it's citizens against "premature death". Sure it's possible to go all the way and create a nanny state by enforcing thousands of authoritarian rules. But I just don't understand the rationale behind such a policy.
And just because the medical industry are willing to make a buck on extensive vaccination of a self-inflicted disease where is the similatity between protecting the population agains random diseases and protecting everyone agains something that some individuals chooses to inflict upon themselves?
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Here's some information on the vaccines mentioned in the article. There's one from Xenova and another developed by Scripps . Both work by creating antibodies to Cocaine. The Xenova vaccine has had a phase II trial. I wonder if the specificity of the antibodies is really a settled question. If not, then you might find that pleasure, pain, and sex or something more subtle wouldn't be quite the same thing again. Not something I'd want to mess with. It seems silly, if not scary to be considering giving it to children at this point. Here are the folks at the UK Brain, Science, Addiction, and Drugs although they don't have much up.
Governments have very poor records in their dabbling in drugs. In the grand days of the British Empire, the west used the opium trade and essentially encouraged opium use to control the masses in China and elsewhere.
In the US, we find that the CIA actively explored the use of LSD for the purpose of mind control. Ken Kesey got hooked during government experiments.
Sounds to me like government is still up to its old tricks of using chemicals to control minds.
Of course, immmunization against euphoria would seem like a prize to politicians. Think how much more secure we would be in our old age if the children who support us were immunized against euphoria. They would be happy little drones working their days away to our benefit. Best of all, with the big successes of Ritalin and anti euphoria drugs...government medical research will be able to get back to get back to what it does best...find ways to control people.
9/11 proved that there is just too much freedom in the world. We need to get rid of that nasty freedom thang if we want to remain free.
Are derivatives to morphine all based off of Heroin, cocaine, or nicotine?
Your statement is partially correct and partially incorrect. The opioid family of drugs consists largely of the painkillers in current use today (with a few others that don't fit in and have a different mechanism of action). It's not that morphine is based off of heroin, as you say, but rather that opium poppies give us three principal opiates: morphine, codeine, and thebaine (which behaves slightly differently than typical opiates in that it has somewhat of a stimulant effect as opposed to a sedative effect). The other major opioids are either synthetic (e.g. Demerol aka meperidine) or derivates of the aforementioned three (e.g. heroin, and IIRC, oxycodone and hydrocodone).
Cocaine and nicotine are completely different. Cocaine has some anaesthetic properties, but is largely not regarded as a general painkiller. It's great for dental surgery.
And with regards to the article, the euphoria / sedative properties of opiates can be a *very* good thing. I had to have a very intrusive procedure performed on me (colonoscopy - ick) and before the examination, I was injected with 50 mg of Demerol and 10 mg of Valium (a benzodiazepine also known as diazepam). The combined sedative / euphoria effect of the two allowed me to go in much more relaxed and at ease. If the euphoria of the meperidine had been blocked, I suspect they would have had to have given me a larger dose of benzodiazepines to compensate, which would increase chances of dangerous CNS depression inherent in these drugs in the first place.
People are creating pills to immunize people against fealings of guilt and remorse.
Slightly ironic that the
Usually dose is more dependent on age than anything else. Dosages are rarely much different, although trauma patients do need a bit more oomph. As long as you watch for opiate toxicity, there is no maximum dose. Tolerance gives you less of a safety window as the maximum dose is still the same but the amount needed to give the same effect is more.
I routinely write on any morphine prescription "Patient awake, in pain, and respiratory rate over 10" (number of breaths per minute). Overdose gives respiratory depression (hence slow breathing). Pupil size (small) is a marker for opiate use but not useful for toxicity. Coma too, but sometimes you can get coma without respiratory depression.
PS of course I use abbreviations when I write that so no-one can understand it. Forunately they never question it because they can't read my writing.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
No it's cool, because I think I was too vague about what particularly in society is the problem: the absolution of resposibility.
If I had any say anywhere and drug use was legalized, if you committted a crime while under the influence of a drug, then the punishment would be greater, thereby enforcing greater personal responsibility. However, some aspects of society place people in positions where drugs are a viable means of escape. It's a sad truth.
People get shit on pretty hard sometimes, and at times nothing matters to them anymore. I've been there and I know a handful of people that have also been there. You just get shit on so hard you basically give the hell up, and no longer care about responsibility. Once you get that far, it takes damn near a miracle to really bootstrap yourself.
That's all I meant. Society is made by people, so in the end, people are to blame.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
What kind of FUD have you heard? They most commonly use chicken embryos (ie eggs), not human fetuses. No vaccine that I've heard of uses human fetuses for it's creation.
There are a few treatments for genetic disorders that use stem cells from the umbilical cord, otherwise all 'fetal tissue' used is used in research.
As it goes, my grandfather had polio. He still walks with a limp.
As for those who can't be vaccinated, the more people you get who can be vaccinated protect those who can't, as they won't become a carrier.
I don't read AC A human right
Actually, that IS the problem: Drugs are TOO fun. They are often times more fun than other things in people's lives that turn out to be useful to society. Like work, friends, and family. If none of these (or any other) areas of your life are very appealing compared to being high, you tend to get high instead of spending time with them. Which tends to make work, friends, and family even less enjoyable, or not even available. And since drugs can be taken in doses much greater than their natural analogs, they often are more fun, almost by the biological definition of the word.
You have a reward system in your brain that has evolved for hundreds of millions of years to promote evolutionarily useful behavior. Drugs skirt right around this system and end up promoting one behavior; getting high again. And, since, as mentioned above, the doses can be so much higher (or bind tighter) than natural versions, you get habits and desires burned into your brain quickly and deeply.
Ever hear of "thinking with your genitals"? Much of that "thinking" is attributable to the reward system in your brain. Tapping into that with drugs is like hypnotizing yourself that doing drugs is what you want. You create a new, often dangerous behavior that becomes instinctual along the lines of sex because it uses the same pathways as sex!
>No... For the past 50 years they've been concentrating on
>*treatment* not *cures*. Because they don't want a one
>time sale... they want an annuity.
This poster nails it. Cancer cure? Nope. Lots of expensive "treatments", though. Diabetes? No cure. AIDS? No cure. Some track record there, big pharma. And this after *taxpayers* have shoveled tens of billions of dollars of cash at big pharma, in the form of patent protections, tax breaks, subsidies and research grants.
Yet another corporate scam. When will you suckers wake up? If big pharma spent as much on cures as they did on marketing, lobbying and PR propaganda, we'd have a disease-free planet. And they'd all be out of a job.
So far as The Man is concerned, both vice (not doing as you're told) and virtue (not thinking as you're told) are rebellious and undesirable.
Seems like every jesus freak I know was a prior alcoholic, drug, sex, or gambling addict. I suppose it's good to switch your addiction to something "good", but gee, lets just live our lives with some common sense, comradery, and a quest for truth....This month's Popular Science has an interview with Arthur C. Clarke who looks at religion as a virus of the mind...
Yes, it seems that the purveyors of religion, the "opiate of the masses", are, just like many other drug dealers, trying to wipe out the competition without regard to who is harmed. I have been around drug addicts and religion addicts - I much prefer the drug addicts. Someone once listed a list of things, such as religion, drugs, flogging, sensory deprivation, sex, piercing/tattoing, dancing, etc. - the proponents of one of those activities (at least christians) were trying to ban all the others. Other religions, and even christianity at one time, have incorporated many of those into the practices of the religious elite and sometimes even the populace. But they weren't always viewed as competition. ALL of those practices are incorporated by various religions. Christianity apparently banned drugs and reading at about the same time (the beginning of the dark ages), to prevent the masses from participating except as obedient sheep.
Another reason behind the phenomenon you observed is that christianity preys on people in moments of weakness and tries to convert them. And 12 step programs all try to substitute the opiate of the masses for the drug of choice. 12 step programs are like long distance carriers trying to get you to trade one brand of addiction for another. And, of course, people with addictive personallities are not going to tend towards moderation in their new addiction so they become bible thumping extremists. But their problem in the first place often wasn't their drug of choice, it was their inability to moderate. Those that were able to moderate in the first place and take up christianity may become the tolerant (and tolerable) christians.
As a cancer patient, I too worry that programs to lessen the 'abuse-ability' of certain drugs will make them useless to those fighting serious pain. At age 22 I was diagnosed with bone cancer, the tumor wrapped around my right pelvic bone and was inmeshed in with my nerves, giving me tremendous pain in my hip and all down the front and back of my right leg. In the last months leading up to the experimental surgery (amputation), I filled at least ten different pain perscriptions, at my doctor's suggestion, to attempt to find one that helped the pain (we'd try one, it wouldn't work, he'd write me a perscription for another...etc). After the first two, my perscriptions took longer and longer to fill...they would call the doctor and wait to get a call back confirming I really needed these drugs, and I wasn't just an addict. I know fellow cancer sufferers who were refused drugs, had perscriptions torn up, because the pharmacy believed they were drug addicts due to the amount of medication they required. I can only imagine how vaccinations would make this worse.
My surgery is another case where I am grateful vaccinations such as those in the article are not in use. I was given massive doses of Fentynol and various other heavy drugs in the hospital to attempt to control the tremendous pain from the hemipelvectomy (amputation of hip and leg, had part of my spine messed with, as well). If I had resistance to such medications, I never would have made it. As it was, it took about three months for me to get off the 'hard stuff' and onto the regular stuff (ie Percoset) because of the pain. If I had been resistant, I imagine I would never have been able to get out of bed, do physical therapy, and hell, eat because of pain.
I'm sorry to hear of your chronic pain...it makes me wish that instead of trying to 'fight drug use' they would put that money toward better pain medications with less side effects.
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