Vaccine for Cocaine

[Joel Awesome]

Apparently some guys at Baylor (the very conservative Christian college my sister went to) are developing a vaccine for cocaine.
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/storie...01-02-07-47-24
Wonder how long before this is part of high school required immunization.

[Scar]

I don't understand what it does, prevent you from using it? Make it not capable of working? I am sure once it is developed and administered a new and more fantastical drug will come along to take its place.. what's that crazy one we took at _____'s Bday party? The one with the half number half letter name??

[OliX]

3p?

[evilstonermonkey]

basically it makes your antibodies recognise the cocaine and attack it before it effets you, so it stops you from getting high.

maybe larger doses will be able to overpower the system, though i doubt that would be healthy. besdes, as you said, if coke stops working theyll just make something else. and odds are itll be worser.

[Toe Cutter]

If it work like that chantix does for smokers, and could help people get clean I think it's a good idea. Although I'm very skeptical of anything like that coming from a "chistian" college. Sounds dubious doesn't it?

[Cafe_Post_Mortem]

The designers are making it for people who are trying to quit. The people designing it are not expecting it to be a guarantee, it is supposed to help though.

Unfortunately in our society just quiting is not good enough. The mere fact that you used drugs will disqualify you from jobs, schooling and doing well in general if people know. Not if you were addicted and committed crimes, not even if you were addicted, just if you used. So even if you quit, clean up your life and move on, there is a chance that it just won't matter.

[dead_but_twitching]

kinda of bad in one sense though..
some people might take cocaine and just say " hey fuck it i can just quit at anytime now thanks to the vaccine... im not addict, i'm just doing it for fun!"

or, they might just start with something else, like evilsonermonkey said

[ForrestBlack]

That sounds chemically kind of dangerous. Screwing with people's systems like that could certainly have bad results. What if it made some people immune to other related drugs and they didn't find out until they were in the hospital or something.

[Cafe_Post_Mortem]

People say they can quit any time without a vaccine now. Since our drug education largely consists of "drugs are bad m'kay." people by and large have no idea of how cocaine works. A lot of coke users assume, because a guy they knew once did not get addicted, neither will they.

Ideally real and practical drug education would go a long way, but every health class I took had drug films from the 70's about the guy who thought he could fly on LSD and other such nonsense.

[Joel Awesome]

what's that crazy one we took at _____'s Bday party? The one with the half number half letter name??

2-CB.
There's already something worse than coke, crystal methanphetamine.

[Morning Glory]

well vaccine is a little bit misleading. as you know it typically applies to viral infections, where a dead or weakened form of the virus is introduced to your system, so that your white cells will be "used" to it and be able to recognize and fight off the real thing.

From what I understand this drug induses the body to "recognize" the cocaine molecues as foreign viralents and "attack" them, thus a person could take cocaine and it would be completely neutralized by thier body and have no effect. I'm not really sure how that works, because alkaloids don't bond to your cells the way that other infectious chemicals do, they don't even effect your immune system at all, they just reside in between the brain synapsis. Of course, I am just a layman and no expert on the subject.

The way common alkaloids effect you is that they stimulate your brain to release endorphines, chemicals that make you feel good. After a while continued use of these drugs causes the brain to mistake the drug chemical as it's natural endorphine level and so it stops releasing the real ones. What that means is that you have to keep taking the drug to feel good and take more of it. Eventually the drug has no effect and you simple notice how you start "crashing" when you are off of it, and you take it just to balance your system into it's now normal levels. that's called being an addict.

The typical treatment for meth and nicotine releases a chemical into your system that blocks your endorphine outpoint, so really it's a reverse drug, it makes your body think that there are no endorphines being released and it ignores the drug signals, and goes back to it's natural process. Over time people lose the urge to do drugs and hopefully return to normal. The problem here is that this still keeps your system unbalanced. While it's intended for the short term and most people feel this treatment is better than continuing to use the drugs, there's really no telling what long-term effects it can have on your body or if you ever really will be able to return to normal. the testing shows that some people do experience harmful effects. medical science only requires a drug to work most of the time, and the studies are just done to get it into that category, there's usually no further studying after that point and they don't consider that there might be a difference in the effects over a period of a few months and over a period of 20 years. That's why you always see all the recalls and adds for lawyers saying, "did you know someone that took such and such in 1995 and dropped dead?"

So if they can work out the bugs on this new treatment it definatly sounds like the way to go.

But yeah, I also worry about the Orwellian implications of such things and the possible use as a true vaccine, that is to make it manditory for the population to get injected with it so that they they will not use drugs in the future. The more than ever rise in genetic manipulation is scary and will only lead to bad consequences.

[Mr Karl]

sounds addictive

[Cafe_Post_Mortem]

Although there is still a cynical side of me that believes the attempt to prevent people from using cocaine will prove more intoxicating and addictive than the cocaine.

It's happened before.

[antiseptic fashion]

Ehem, rant..

I worked as a drug counselor for a while at a treatment facility in Southern California, so naturally, these thing tend to interest me,
naloxone hydrochloride and similar drugs has been used to treat heroin overdoses for years, not so recently variations of the drug have been used in addicts/users via sub dermal implant, to block the effects of opiates for a year or more, I've even heard of these implants being used by the courts as a part of probation/parole on repeat offenders.
The idea of a blocker/antagonist has been around for a long time, but the approach they are using for this new so called "vaccine" to treat cocaine like a virus is new, I find it very interesting.
There have been ongoing debates regarding the different models for the treatment of addiction for some time now. One of the more popular models is to view addiction as an incurable disease, asNarcotics Anonymous does, I personally consider this method to be manipulative, and cult like, because it is rarely backed up by any scientific proof and never allows the addict to recover and move on.
Anyhow, the way this "vaccine" is made and used by the body, (it is bonded to dead cholera proteins so the immune system will react to it), makes me curious as to how many types of addictive drugs this would work with.
I have heard of something similar used on Methamphetamine addicts that is very popular right now, I forget the name.
I'm interested to hear what the long term affects are for this new medication, and if it or something similar could be or is being used currently on other types of addictive drugs..

[Amelia G]

I would worry that the side-effects of something which blocked cocaine would also block natural mood and cognitive functions. I almost don't see how it wouldn't.

[Joel Awesome]

I would worry that the side-effects of something which blocked cocaine would also block natural mood and cognitive functions. I almost don't see how it wouldn't.

The way I read it, this "vaccine" doesn't do anything to the brain, it just grabs all the cocaine molecules like they were pathogen molecules before they breach the blood brain barrier.

[OliX]

why do coce in first place?

ok... that was silly question

[evilstonermonkey]

yeah, sounds like it just makes the body recognise coke as an outside agent and destroy it before it effects you. it isnt chemically effecting you to counteract the drug - it is destoying the drug before it effects you in the first place.

[Wynden Nightshade]

so you don't get high...but you can still give yourself a heart attack??? Okay I'm confused... what's the appeal?

[OliX]

it's like smoking cigaretes instead of pot I guess....

what's cocaine in first place?

I'm 100% shure if I ever wanted to find and get some no mather what price I pay I would get a some crazy mix up. Probably a bit of wall scratched out with a spoon

is there any first cut aviable in world except in columbia?

[Xochitl]

We all have vices. Still coke is hard, I worked for a spell in cardiology & saw the effects of it on a long term basis. Even took care of Rick James. I dunno about messing with someone's chemical make-up more that it is already screwed up from the drugs though. I have yet to see anyone really take a look at what brings people to that point in the first place. Mental illness might be something they should encourage people to get help for first as they are usually medicating something. It would be nice to see this college provide counseling & help for people so they can deal with their problems in a much healthier way.

[Mr Karl]

how bout a drug to make people on coke shut the fuck up

[Amelia G]

The way I read it, this "vaccine" doesn't do anything to the brain, it just grabs all the cocaine molecules like they were pathogen molecules before they breach the blood brain barrier.

Couldn't it also block things like food and beverages and excersize which make a person feel good?

[evilstonermonkey]

onl if they were made of coke...

odds are it would need to have a very similar chemical makeup to be recognised by the 'improved' immune system. but hey, my diploma of science is printed on the same stuff as babies chewable books, so i may not be qualified to answer

[Amelia G]

how bout a drug to make people on coke shut the fuck up

Now that could be seriously marketable.