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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."
While this would be a good thing to give to, say, former drug addicts and such, I don't see why children need to be involved. Besides, whose to say it won't have harmful side effects that aren't seen until later?
...will those who are 'vaccinated' become physically ill every time someone plays Beethoven's No. 9?
If people want to "vaccinate" themselves from drugs that they deem harmful, that's fine by me. However, even though I choose to abstain from drug use, I'd definitely not want to vaccinate myself. By vaccinating yourself, you're basically saything that your will is too weak to be able to avoid these 'vices'. And that might be fine for some people. As long as parents don't start vaccinating their children before they kids can think for themselves, and schools public schools don't require them alongside the other vaccines.
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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
.. basically, it's gonna deaden the highs. You won't be able to get much more than a mild effect off of anything. I don't really see how this would stop you being physically addicted to something though.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
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?
It used to be an insult to say "you've been hiding upder a rock". But now, I think it's a comment. Screw civilization, it's been bastardized by those seeking to control it at the expense of the masses.
;)
Yes siree bob...i'm finding me a BIG ROCK to hind under. But i'll still keep an eye out on the world for my own safety.
Life is not for the lazy.
The Two Commandments for the Molecular Age
Thou shalt not alter the consciousness of thy fellow men.
Thou shalt not prevent thy fellow man from altering his or her own consciousness.
Drug abuse is a sign of other social problems, it is a symptom of greater problems. Simply attacking the symptom wont help anything. Also this vaccine would take away any last shreds of personal responsibility in the matter, entrusting big brother to look after you and know which receptors in your brain shouldn't be binded to.
Instead of taking care of making heroin or morphine non-addictive, they should start with nicotine and alcohol, both of which are a lot cheaper than any other drugs and cause ravages in the population.
So while they think about far-fetched solutions to hard drug abuses, *I* have to keep struggling not to light a cigarette again, despite the tremendous cravings I have regularly, even afters years of quitting, so I don't have to go back see my lung specialist again.
But I guess fighting alcohol and tobacco abuse would remove an easy source of income for the government eh? Cheap lying bastards, I can't think a a worse bunch of hypocrits than those who profit from the sale of alcohol and tobacco and pretend to fight the addiction too...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What the fuck, vaccinating against drugs? What next, mandatory chemical castration? This is ridiculous. I'm already fed up enough with the endless war on drugs and now this. When will governments get it into their heads that prohibition doesn't stop anything. If you want to go do drugs fine. If you want to tell me not to do drugs, fine. Then to alter someone elses free will accordingly so? What if suddenly I told one of these anti-drug fanatics that something they enjoy doing is now illegal, no matter how "innocent" it seems. I don't think these people really care about the effects their actions have in the long run, as long as they have the delusion that they're in a safer place or what not.
You're all going to die, and so are your kids. Get over it.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
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.
--
Power to the Peaceful
I think everybody here has heard of 1984, but maybe the AC is 16 or 17 and just got done reading it for school, or maybe he thinks that a lot of the people reading Slashdot are young and haven't read it or thought to read it. In any case, cut him some slack -- if only out of generosity.
On a related note, I think the book to read is A Clockwork Orange, which is also a very good movie by the way.
I won't say anything more than it applies here, for fearing of seeming patronizing!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
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.
It's the usual quick-fix mentality. Instead of asking what problems cause people to turn to drugs (mental disease, poverty, social problems, etc.), a syringe is supposed to fix it. It's the same quick fix mentality that dominates so much of politics, and it's not going to work.
Instead of some people sedating their problems and imposing health care costs on everybody else, which is bad enough, you are going to have the same people doing something else self-destructive and probably even more destructive to others.
And for that quick fix, you risk several deaths a year from medical mistakes (wrong injection, infection, etc.) during vaccination, as well as unknown long-term consequences and the possibility that important future drugs won't work.
Worse case scenario, the immune system eaither mis-learns or mutates its defences, and starts attacking the bodys own chemicals. The body produces small ammounts of morphine to regulate pain. Heroin addicts take so much that the body attems to regulate by producing less morphine. When a heroin adic goes through withdrawl, his body essentiall has no natural morhine in it, hence constant pain. If the immune system was trained to destroy morphine, then the recipient could be in a perminent withdrawl. Nicotine mimics a natural nuro-transmitter in the brain. I would hate to see what would happen if a autoimmune reaction against that nuro-transmitter happened.
Complex systems react unpredicably when disrupted. We don't know enough abou the human body to interfear with it in this way.
This is rather remarkable in that there is no discussion of the risks of such a treatment. Drugs generally work by either mimicking neurotransmitters themselves, mimicking their precursors, or by mimicking other chemicals that cause a release of neurotransmitters. This is true of both recreational drugs and prescription drugs like Prozac or Zoloft.
Cocaine, for instance, is known to work by effecting a massive release of dopamine into the brain, which is then reuptaken quickly, providing the high. Alcohol similarly effects a release of GABA (among other neurotransmitters), while GHB is actually a precursor to GABA itself and is converted thus in the brain.
It would seem to me that messing with the pathways through which any given drug actually works, unless it is almost impossibly specific, would mess with the normal operation of the brain. What's to say that a "vaccine" designed to prevent cocaine's method of activity won't prevent or at least diminish all such activity in the brain? Parkinson's Disease is caused at least partially by screwy dopamine levels in the brain. Who knows if injecting people with a virus that prevents rushes of dopamine won't affect the normal rushes of dopamine that occur during life, like after a particularly good orgasm or a 10K-run?
It just sounds like fucking with neurotransmitters, especially on a genetic level, is a recipe for disaster.
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.
There is a good article about it here. Here are a few choice quotes.
"And, sure enough, in the late 30s and early 40s, in five really flamboyant murder trials, the defendant's sole defense was that he -- or, in the most famous of them, she -- was not guilty by reason of insanity for having used marijuana prior to the commission of the crime."
"Doctor, when you used the drug, what happened?" "After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat."
"You know what the women testified? In Newark they testified, and I quote, "After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette my incisor teeth grew six inches long and dripped with blood."
2004, and the madness still hasn't ended. Now we might even start vaccinating people so that they don't try out these demonic drugs. Jeez, someone get me off this damn planet.
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.
Call me too far left if you want, but protection from euphoria? That's a worrying precedent. Maybe I'm being too Timothy Leary here, but if people want to try something on their own bodies, they should be allowed to - drugs or no drugs, why should the goverment or a corporate entity have the power to give us 'protection from euphoria';
From dictionary.com Drugs or no drugs, is this something we want to be protected from? It's my body, I should be allowed to put whatever I want into it, but next time I want to be 'protected from a feeling of great happiness or well-being' acheived in a non-government-licenced way, I'll call them up.
Meanwhile, I'll go back to watching the world slowly march towards 1984.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I watched Equilibrium again this weekend. How long until governments want us all like little sheep, not feeling emotions, tracking our every movement, communication, meeting, just going to work, and enjoying the state proscribed and approved entertainment?
Download, I, er mean rent this film and watch it.
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You're more right than you know. Somebody in severe pain can tolerate doses of opiates which would quickly kill a healthy person. The rule seems to be 'If the patient can still tell you it hurts, it's safe to up the dose.' (sorry, no link [1])
[1] I was told about this effect by my mother, who spent >10 years working in an Intensive Care Unit. Shortly after she started, she was shocked to see the dosages used on people with severe injuries - they were completely off the scale of normal dosage charts.
Two comments:
1. For 30+ years we have been wrestling with the consequences of simple Cigarettes! We have corporations hiding health info, playing with nicotine amounts, and a ton of cancer patients and billion dollar lawsuits. All for a drug which by all accounts is potentially deadly after long-term use but is comparatively benign. Unlike, say alcohol, coke, or heroin, it does not cause intoxication and cigarette addiction is very unlikely to cause you to lose your job and family.
Now considering everything you know about the tobacco companies and all that has come out in the past 30+ years, you really want a "more enlightened" policy leading to [insert Cigarettes company] brand heroin, cocaine, or crack? Only for 18+, of course....
2. From the article's poster:
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.
Come on, enough with the tired "big bad evil phamaceutical company" conspiracy theory crap. For being so incredibly evil and selfish, they sure have cured a whole bunch of different diseases the past 50+ years. The way your talk, its like you think the companies are introducing viruses just to make cures for them. I wonder if you will change your thinking if you ever have, God forbid, cancer, heart disease, or fertility problems. Probably not...
Just because they don't give away their hard-earned discoveries for free doesn't make them evil. If you don't like it, don't use their discoveries! You can get 1970's era drugs real cheap generically. Good luck surviving.
Brian Ellenberger
Brave people don't mod down, they reply. True cowards use overrated.
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.
You can't vaccinate against morphine ... it modulates ion channels which you would have to somehow remove
...and then you would have serious issues.
Yes you can. You can produce antibodies that bind the active parts of the appropriate drugs, or that bind to the receptors in ways that block them without activating them. These will reduce or eliminate the effect of the drug on the receptor.
Absolutely:
For starters, if it blocks the drugs, what do you want to bet that you'll also block the effects of the natural compounds. Then those vaccinated will be something like a drug addict in withdrawal FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. Everything would HURT. Just sitting around would hurt. Exercise would hurt more. Painkillers wouldn't work.
Imagine one of these kids in highschool - the worst of "whiny wimps" just sitting there. Sports would be agony. And that's before the unimunized jocks start beating on him to watch him squirm.
Then there are the feedback mechanisms modulating the number of receptors, production of neurotransmitters, and production of antibodies. The reduced performance of the neurotransmitter-receptor system will result in the increase in the number of receptors (already known to be part of the addiction mechanism) and/or the increase in the production of the neurotransmitter.
But with antibodies to naturally produced protiens, this could produce more stimulation of the immune system: More antibodies against the receptors. Inflamation (of the BRAIN!) in the affected sites. Possible immune cascade from the inflamation causing the production of antibodies to OTHER self-antigens, and a runaway autoimmune disease akin to a cross between Graves and Lupus.
Then there's the question of what this will do to other behavior. It's making a MAJOR change to the internal reward pathways of the brain. How will these people do in school? On the job? How will they respond to advertising? Political propaganda? Religious indoctrination?
There are indications that psycopathy is the result of a failure in an emotional pathway, leading to both loss of guilt feelings and risk-taking in an attempt to achieve any feeling at all. Is THIS the pathway in question? Will an "immunization" program raise the incidence of psychopathy from about 1% of the population to the bulk of it? Will we have a generation of used car salesmen, confidence men, gangsters, death-squad members, and political dictators?
Or is it NOT the same pathway, but one that produces some OTHER pathology when it fails? Will we find ourselves with a generation of some OTHER, formerly-rare, pathological stereotype as the bulk
of our population?
Fooling around with something as basic as the reward hardware of the mind is NOT something you can do and expect no undesirable side-effects.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress. Right on topic.
"Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users".
"Meanwhile, experts at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, have developed a super-virus, harmless to humans, which produces proteins that can block or reduce the effects of cocaine."
"The Ministry of Love is developing a simple operation that reduces the drive towards dangerous sex acts by eliminating the risk of orgasm."
One of those sentences is not in the article.
I'm astounded. What has anyone of these children done to deserve forced-injection with anything? Manditory vaccination is something we do for communicable diseases, not lifestyle choices!
We have trouble convincing even at-risk first responders to accept vaccination against things like anthrax that some one might actually try to kill them with. And these people want to force vaccinate everyone against cocaine, beer and cigarettes? Insane.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take.
What an idiotic approach. The problem with drugs is not the temporary feeling of euphoria, the problem is that some of them are physically addictive and some have negative side effects. Riding a roller coaster, running a 10K, or having sex provides a temporary feeling of euphoria. Temporary feelings of euphoria are good - they are what our genes give us in return for being their host and propagation vector. The entire hedonistic meaning of life is the pursuit of temporary feelings of euphoria. Without those temporary feelings of euphoria the only reasons to go on living are religion and socialism. What will they do next? put all the children on Ritalin? Solve the physical addiction problem, eliminate the negative side effects, and promote healthy recreational use.
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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.
Oh come on this is such a joke. Im not scared for a second that this would ever happen. There are always wackos around who come up with totally fundamentalist/totalitarian/insane ideas that you never hear about again. This country isnt as big-brother as you think, we might not have a bill of rights (but we do have the data protection act and drinking at 18), but the people here have a common sense (usually) attitude, and its always ok to dislike the government (ive yet to see a patriotic flag-waving person who thinks Blair is the greatest and we should back him all the way). One thing we do have allot of is mad scientists: Professor David Nutt, speaks for itself really.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
So I have no doubt this page is filled with outraged posts about this idea. However, I come at this from a little differnt angle. I don't have any problem with government mandated mind alteration so long as it really made people happier/better off (the reason that we tend to view it as so objectionable it is always imagined to produce a situation that is on the whole less pleasant). However, this is simply a BAD idea which quite likely will make things significantly less pleasent.
The suggestion of vaccinating children againt morphine or cocaine reminds me of the claims of supposed health benefits for drinking radioactive water (it was eventually banned when someone drank so much their lower jaw fell off). People are jumping over a nifty new technology they don't understand and injudisciously pushing it on the public. I don't say this lightly, I am usually quite disgusted when people cry wolf about new technologies and demand they adhere to a higher safety standard than current options. However, just as in the radioactive water example it isn't merely that we can't guarantee something isn't harmfull but we have good reason to suspect something might be harmfull.
In this example scientists are blindly screwing with important neural circutry. This is analagous to inserting random bytes into your kernel until affects the option you desire. Even if on observation in a differnt enviornment from the production one (rats instead of humans) the kernel still appeared stable you wouldn't trust it for production. Even worse people age, go through puberty etc.. unlike a computer so even a vaccine that seems fine now might manefest problems years later. Also in people we care more about just their external behavior, what if this makes people unhappy.
This is precisely what I fear. More and more evidence keeps mountaing that all sorts of everyday activities cause the same brain activity as drug use. This includes things like eating chocolate and socialization. In fact many important experiences, like the glow of love or post orgasmic bliss are caused by natural versions of illicit drugs (endorphines affect the same receptors as opiates like heroin). Most likely the same receptors these drugs target exist to give important human experiences and perhaps drug addiction is nothing more than an extreme version of desire caused by enjoyment. Quite likely if we give someone these vaccines you would permanetly impair their happiness or experience.
These drugs might be usefull for some severe addicts who desperatly want to get clean but don't have the willpower. The drug lifestyle might be doing them more harm then they risk from this vaccine. Unfortunatly, since they are quiting narcotics (or continuing) it is virtually impossible to tell if the vaccine impaired their natural enjoyment of life (feeling this way can be a sideeffect of longterm drug use). While I'm normally all for testing I'm leary of even giving *one* human test subject this vaccine unless it is their only reasonable hope. Death is one thing but being still alive and finding you can't enjoy life like you were before is simply dreadfull.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
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.
From the article: "Professor David Nutt, a leading government drugs adviser who sits on the committee, told the IoS that anti-drug vaccines for children are likely to be among the panel's recommendations when it reports next March."
Now did you not read that, or do you think they were just lying about that? Drawing unfounded conclusions is shoddy reporting, lying about what people have actually said is far beyond that into the range of libel.
So at least as far as the claim that they're considering imunization of children, there doesn't seem to be any shoddy reporting going on. There might very well be some shoddy thinking going on by those who are developing the vaccines and those who are planning how to use them, but that is an entirely different (and more serious) issue.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
My favorite part was talking about "spiraling addiction."
This is pretty much directly linked to Britain's rise in amphetamine interdiction raids. Amphetamines and cocaine are often used interchangeably, depending on market rate. When they start busting more cocaine, you'll see a rise in amphetamine use, with the re-emergence of mainlining amphetamines ("speed") - on par with crack cocaine.
My other favorite part:
Perhaps it would be better to say that the cost of the drug war is 12+ bn pounds a year. The only way to know the cost of drug addiction would be to know the approximate number of addicts and the approximate yearly public cost of a legal addict.
Oh, that's right: Britain does* have those numbers. There used to be a program for distributing legal heroin to addicts in Britain, and the entire program was quite cheap. Certainly not 12 billion pounds a year: heroin maintenance wasn't even a major budget issue.
Yes, except every now and then there are small outbreaks of measles and whooping cough because society gets a bit slack or some pseudo-science nuts start panicing everybody. Measeles will hospitalize about 1 in every 1000 unimunized children and kill about 1 in every 30,000. With some vaccines when 90+% of the population is immunized most of the others "catch" the vaccine and are also protected. Polio, measles, smallpox, these and other nasties were the scourge of my parents generation, they killed indescriminantly and often. OTOH: The article would make the naive think coke is deadlier than measles. What really interests me is where do I get a nicotine jab. I've been smoking for 30yrs. For those who don't know, nicotine is far more addictive than coke, it is more like heroin than coke for addiction factor and is clearly worse on your health. What's that you say, to get my nicotine jab I have to take a combination vaccine that will also take the pleasure out of grog and ganga, forget it, pass me the lighter. I have a reasonably sound mind and belive I have the right to treat my body badly now and then but I do think we have a responsibilty to stop the spread of fatal & dibilitating disiese. Yes, I know, addiction can be classed as a dibilitaing even fatal disease but the difference is that addiction is normally illegal not contaigous.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
As for the Parties as a whole, in a recent bill to allow states to set their own rules for Medical Marijuana, only 10% of Republican Reps voted in favor of it, while nearly two thirds of Democrats did. While we need to flush the bad third of Dems out, most of them chose the sane option. They aren't the same, one Party is salvageable, whilst the Republicans are wholly controlled by an evil, backward, sect of Puritanical monsters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,126869 0,00.html/
http://www.cannabis.net/presidentialpot.html/
http://www.maryjanesgarden.com/legalization_of_mar ijuana.php/
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
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
It's not ironic because the /. article and VV article are about different drugs that block different things. The /. article is about a drug that blocks the euphoric feelings one gets when taking recreational drugs, so vaccinated against vices is the appropriate title. The VV article is about a drug that blocks feelings of guilt and remorse, and it's taken after an event, so it's more like a cure than a vaccine. Anyhow, the two articles are different, so no irony.
Nice Marmot
I saw a standup comic who gave several good examples of irony after a few minutes' criticism directed at Alanis Morrissette. The one I recall best is,
Irony is naming an airport after the president who fired all the air traffic controllers.
Mom says my
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.
LSD is not addictive. Get your facts straight.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
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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