FREE COCAINE FOR ADDICTION STUDY SUBJECTS

Research Into Drug's Effects On Brain Aims To Find Ways To Curb Cravings

MONTREAL - Human guinea pigs in an unusual McGill University study
are being given cocaine for free so researchers can chart the effects
of the highly addictive drug on the brain with hopes of finding ways
to curb strong cravings.

The study -- which at first glance may raise some eyebrows -- was
deemed the best in a competition for funding in the medical category
of research related to brain behaviour.

Its author, Marco Leyton, a professor in the university's psychology
department, said about 35 per cent of people who use cocaine will
become addicted and end up with a serious problem.

"I tell my students that if Cuisinart comes out with a new food
processor and only a third of users lost fingers while the remaining
70 per cent were satisfied, would that be reasonable?" Leyton said
Sunday in an interview.

While giving users free drugs may be seen by some as unethical,
Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for
Medicine, Ethics and Law, said it could also be seen as unethical if
such research isn't done.

"If you can't do the research, you can't help the people with addictions."

Somerville has sat on several ethics committees and said rules for
such projects are very strict. For example, participants have to be
consenting adults and must have used the drug previously, and
researchers can't enlist more subjects than they need.

The ongoing study, which began five years ago and is to continue for
another five with $120,000 annual funding from Canadian Institutes of
Health Research and the blessing of McGill University Health Centre's
ethics board, recruits up to 10 male and female participants a year.
They are paid minimum wage for their time, and their consumption is
tightly controlled.

"Participants are closely monitored and stay overnight for
observation with nurses and physicians on hand," Leyton said. "We
don't just give them the cocaine and say: 'Okay, away you go.' "

Depending on which stage of the study they are involved in,
participants snort just one, or between three and five lines of coke.
They then lie on their backs on a bed while a large, doughnut-shaped
camera uses a technique called positron emission tomography, which
produces a three-dimensional image, or map, of what's going on in the
brain as the drug takes effect.

Leyton hopes to take this information and find ways to lower the
craving in the parts of the brain that go crazy for the drug.

For example, the brain produces dopamine, a substance that allows us
to respond to pleasure and pain, but the brain needs amino acids to make it.

So, said Leyton, if a person is fed a diet low in these amino acids,
the brain will produce less dopamine, thus lowering the brain's
reward response to a drug like cocaine. So far, the study has
involved regular, but not heavy, cocaine users.

But Leyton submitted a proposal last Friday for funding to study heavy users.