] Subj: FEATUREVietnam doctor uses herbs to fight drugs
Source: Reuter

FEATUREVietnam doctor uses herbs to fight drugs


By Adrian Edwards
XA LINH, Vietnam (Reuter) Tran Khuong Dan is not your
usual physician. His father was an opium addict, his brother
died of an overdose tragedies that led him to explore the
mindbending postVietnam War world of Saigon opium dens.
``You know, after the war ended hundreds of wounded veterans
were addicted to the painkiller morphine,'' he said. ``The idea
of finding an antidrug addiction medicine came into my mind
during the time I lived in a neighborhood of drug addicts in
Saigon.''
Dan turned himself into an addict and experienced for
himself the cravings associated with opium or heroin addiction
as well as the torment of withdrawal. He sold his home and went
to live among tribal groups in northern Vietnam where he sought
an answer to addiction in traditional herbal remedies among
communities where opium had been grown for decades.
Fifteen years after that quest began, the 55yearold Dan
may have found a cure, with potential implications for addicts
worldwide. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
announced in June it was stepping up testing of the medicine
that Dan created, a fierytasting brown syrup named Heantos.
Roy Morey, UNDP's Washington director, told a news
conference the medicine had already been tested on 3,000
Vietnamese addicts. He said trials had shown a high degree of
success and reported extraordinary results with only about a 30
percent rate of readdiction and minimal sideeffects.
FOLLOWUP STUDIES IN U.S., VIETNAM
Full testing will require two more years but followup
studies are under way in both Vietnam and the United States by
the Vietnamese government and the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine in Baltimore.
``It's very exciting,'' Laura Dillon of UNDP's Hanoi office
said. ``I'm told normal withdrawal from addiction can feel like
thousands of maggots crawling up your legs. It drives people
mad. Heantos seems to avoid those effects.''
In Hoa Binh some 40 miles west of Hanoi, nervous heroin
addicts arrive at a small rehabilitation center to begin
carefully supervised treatment. One is a young Hanoi taxi
driver, a group notorious for its use of drugs, who breaks down
in tears as he is searched in front of foreign reporters.
Patients who have received treatment declare the process a
success. ``I no longer have cravings since I took Heantos,''
said Le Ngoc Binh, a young woman who was a heroin addict until
June. ``Now I can't think of drugs. If I do it makes me vomit.''
Doctors say the medicine is delivered in two doses. The
first eliminates withdrawal symptoms and leaves patients able to
abstain within a week. The second is taken a month later to
prevent readdiction.
The treatment is said to have a quick effect on addicts to
heroin, cocaine and some addictive medicines. For opium users
the process is slower. The medicine is nonaddictive and so far,
apart from problems cited by some patients in sleeping during
the first course, few sideeffects have been noted.
In Vietnam, the cost is typically around $30 per person,
about a third of the cost of existing alternatives.
ADDICT IS SKEPTICAL OF CLAIMS
Fifty miles away in Xa Linh, a poor village near the Laos
border, 63yearold Hang A Trang scoops opium paste into a pipe,
holds it over an oillamp flame in a dimly lighted room, inhales
and lies back in ecstasy.
The image is straight out of a 19th century East Asia of
opium dens and crazed addicts, but for thousands of people
across the thinly policed and ancient world of northern
Indochina it remains a reality.
``I used to plant opium to earn money but I used it as a
medicine and became hooked,'' said the addict of 34 years, who
added that he has little faith in medicines and believes he
would suffer a relapse if he tried.
For the scientists examining Heantos the skepticism may be
of a more professional nature, but it underlies key questions
about a treatment that, if it lives up to its almost mythical
billing, could affect lives around the world.
Estimates of the cost of drug abuse in the United States
alone range from $70 billion to $80 billion a year for
treatment, crime associated with drug addiction and the cost of
AIDS, which can be transmitted by users sharing needles.
Dan, however, says he is not interested in the possible
money. ``I'm a doctor. All I want is to cure people,'' he said.
^REUTER@