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Tag: Drug abuse

Heroin Vaccine Won’t Cure What Ails Addicts

My aunt Marion is in the hospital dying of liver and kidney failure, the result of her 20-year struggle with heroin use. I was told of her imminent death the same day news broke about a vaccine against the drug. “Breakthrough heroin vaccine could render drug ‘useless’ in addicts,” one headline read. “Scientists create vaccine against heroin high,” proclaimed another.

Meanwhile, my aunt finds temporary relief in the ever more frequent administration of opiate pain medication — the very kind of drugs she used illegally.

The idea of an anti-addiction vaccine is not new. For nearly 40 years scientists have been working on vaccines against all kinds of addictions, including nicotine, marijuana and alcohol. There are even trials of vaccines to prevent obesity. None of the anti-addiction vaccines has yet received Food and Drug Administration approval, however, and most of the studies are still in their early stages.

The headlines trumpeting a heroin vaccine were based on a finding that the drug had proved to be effective on mice during trials in Mexico (a nation that could use some good news related to drugs). Scientists now plan to test the patented vaccine in humans. If all goes well, the vaccine could be available in five years — too late for my aunt but providing a glimmer of hope for the estimated 1 million heroin addicts in the United States. Perhaps.

Six years ago, when I was a doctoral student researching heroin addiction in northern New Mexico, I received an email from a scientist studying a possible vaccine against the drug’s use. The study was in rat models, but early results were promising and suggested the likelihood of a therapeutic effect for humans. Aware of the devastating heroin epidemic in New Mexico, which had the highest rate of heroin-related deaths in the Unites States, and of my work trying to understand it, the scientist wanted to offer some hope. He wrote that he could imagine a time when heroin addiction, in New Mexico and around the world, would be a thing of the past. I wanted to believe him, but I was less optimistic.

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Testing, Testing – Do We Test Interventions Sufficiently?

Are Americans becoming more skeptical of scientific inquiry? Some are, according to the pundits. See, for example, Chystia Freeland’s article in the New York Times, “A Deep Faith in What’s Been Proved,” and Paul Krugman’s article in the same paper, “Republicans Against Science.”

Although there does appear to be a growing skepticism about the value of science to address problems such as global warming, there has long been a neglect of social science when it comes to evaluating programs designed to change people’s behavior in beneficial ways, such as those that try to get kids to avoid drugs and alcohol, teach parenting skills, and prevent adolescent behavior problems. Myriad programs that receive federal and state funding have never been adequately tested to see if they work. When they are tested, they are often found to be ineffective or even to do harm.

Consider the D.A.R.E. drug abuse resistance program, which is used in 75% of school districts in the United States and in more than 40 countries. D.A.R.E. lists among its sponsors the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration, the U. S. Department of State, all five branches of the U. S. military, and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. President Obama, like his predecessors, designated a day in April as National D.A.R.E. Day to commemorate the program.

There is only one problem: D.A.R.E. doesn’t work. Studies have repeatedly shown that kids who take part in the program are no less likely to smoke, drink, or abuse drugs than kids who do not. To their credit, D.A.R.E. officials revamped the program in 2009, and maybe this new version will do some good (it is currently being tested). But doesn’t it seem like putting the cart before the horse to sink millions of dollars into a program and implement it in 75% of our schools before we know whether it works?

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