HIGH IMMUNITY

New Vaccines May Take The Fun Out Of Drugs.

Should we inoculate kids to prevent partying? Until recently, attempts to
treat addiction with drugs have proven ineffective at best, crude at worst.

Methadone is mellower than heroin, but users often trade one addiction for
another.

The drug Anabuse keeps alcoholics in line by triggering nausea when they drink.

And users have yet to report dramatic results from drugs that promise to
temper cravings for cigarettes.

But the pharmaceutical industry is closing in on a new approach that, in
effect, takes the fun out of using so-called recreational drugs.

At least five drug companies and several university scientists are testing
"vaccines" for cocaine, phencyclidine (PCP), meth-amphetamine, and
nicotine, according to Philip Cohen, writing in New Scientist (June 10,
2000.) Like standard vaccines, these drugs program the body to produce
immune-system proteins called antibodies. But instead of fighting off
disease, these antibodies chemically disarm specific drugs in the
bloodstream. Some keep the naughty drugs from reaching the brain, while
others break them up into nonintoxicating chemical bits.

On an individual level, these new drugs offer hope to people who are
struggling to quit smoking or snorting.

But as potential new weapons in the war against drugs, Cohen argues, the
vaccines come with a load of ethical questions. "Should people be
vaccinated simply because they belong to a group thought to be particularly
at risk of becoming addicted?" he writes. "Should parents be allowed to
make that decision for their children?

Might companies screen job applicants for traces of anti-drug antibodies,
in the belief that this would finger former users?"

When the scientist Barbara Fox first asked the National Institute on Drug
Abuse (NIDA) for money to research a cocaine vaccine, the agency turned her
down flat. Reviewers at NIDA, a division of the federal government's
National Institutes of Health, expressed nervousness about the ethical
implication of the drugs.

But three years later, in 1997, the agency had warmed to the idea. Fox, who
is now with a Boston area pharmaceutical company called Addiction Therapies
Inc., won a $700,000 NIDA award to test her approach.

Fox and other researchers have already had some success with animal studies.

Rats and monkeys with intravenous access to cocaine partied away until they
got the vaccine and then seemed to lose their enthusiasm for cocaine.

In human tests, one of the vaccines has passed its first hurdle, Cohen notes.

A group of recovering cocaine addicts who took the vaccine reported no
serious side effects, and antibodies could be detected in some of them a
year later.

Researchers working on this latest generation of vaccines seem to have
worked out some of the bugs that plagued earlier approaches to anti-drug
medications, Cohen writes. "Antibodies don't mess with the brain chemistry
. . . so there should be fewer side effects," he wrote. "And antibodies are
expected to be long-lived--from weeks to years--compared with a single day
for a dose [of blocking drugs like] naltrexone."

Of course, every addict knows that all drugs come with a price.

For example, writes Carla Spartos in The Village Voice (July 21, 2000),
vaccines often last forever. "There's no turning back," Spartos argues.
"And if the choice of a child [is] in the hands of a parent, or that of a
prisoner in the hands of the government, then involuntary vaccinations
become the result."

She also points out some other shortfalls: If you take enough of a drug,
you can overpower the antibodies. Or you can switch poisons, which is one
reason drug counselor Peter Kerr thinks it is unlikely that the vaccines
will completely replace other treatments. "We're not going to run out of
new and inventive things that are going to make people high, but that
doesn't mean the vaccine won't help some people," Kerr says.

Just who those people might be is another issue.

Selective use of the vaccine raises one set of issues; universal
inoculations raise another. "There would be pressure to get an anti-drug
vaccine, especially when it comes to insurance companies (who might offer
special premiums to the vaccinated) or employers (who in the age of
mandatory drug testing have obvious motives)," Spartos writes. "Though mass
forced vaccinations may be unlikely, a scenario in which individuals feel
pressure to get the vaccine is no less chilling in its implications."

There are no drug vaccines on the market yet, and there may never be. The
leap from lab animals to humans is a big one, and many drugs don't make it.
Still, as Frank Vocci, NIDA's director of drug dependence research, tells
New Scientist, the debate over the legal and ethical issues has already
begun. "I don't think it's too early to start thinking about these things."