By Adrian Edwards

XA LINH, Vietnam, Aug 17 (Reuter) Tran Khuong Dan is not your normal
physician. His father was an opium addict, his brother died of an overdose.
Tragedy led him to explore the mindbending postwar world of Saigon opium
dens.

``You know, after the war ended, hundreds of wounded veterans were addicted
to the painkiller morphine,'' he says. ``The idea of finding an antidrug
addiction medicine came into my mind during the time I lived in a
neighbourhood of drug addicts in Saigon.''

Dan turned himself into an addict and lived for himself the cravings
associated with opium addiction or chasing the heroin dragon, as well as
the torment of withdrawal.

He sold his home. He travelled 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 may have found a
cure, with potential implications for addicts worldwide. UNITED NATIONS
TESTING UNDER WAY

In June this year the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced
it was stepping up testing of the medicine that Dan created, a
fierytasting brown syrup named Heantos.

Roy Morey, the UNDP's Washington director, told a news conference in the
United States that 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 recidivism, or
readdiction, and minimal sideeffects.

Full testing would require two more years, but followup studies were under
way in both Vietnam and the United States by the Vietnamese government and
the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

``It's very exciting,'' says Laura Dillon of the UNDP's Hanoi office. ``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.''

MEDICINE IS TESTED...ON TAXI DRIVERS

At a small centre in Hoa Binh, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) west of Hanoi,
nervous heroin addicts arrive at a small rehabilitation centre to begin
carefully supervised treatment.

One is a young Hanoi taxi driver, a group notorious for its use of drugs.
He breaks down in tears as he is searched in front of foreign reporters.

Patients who have already received treatment declare the process a success.

``I no longer have cravings since I took Heantos,'' says Le Ngoc Binh, a
young woman who until June was a heroin addict. ``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 within a week leaves patients able to abstain. The
second course is taken a month later to prevent readdiction.

It's said to have a quick effect on addicts to heroin, cocaine and some
addictive medicines. For opium users the process is slower.

In Vietnam, the costs of treatment are typically around $30 per person,
about a third of the cost of existing alternatives.

The medicine is nonaddictive, and so far apart from difficulties noted
by some patients in sleeping during the first course few sideeffects
have been noted. CHALLENGE TO PROVE IF HEANTOS LIVES UP TO ITS CLAIMS

Eighty kilometres (50miles) 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 lit room, inhales and lays 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's a reality that remains today.

``I used to plant opium to earn money. But I used it as a medicine, and
became hooked,'' said the addict of 34 years, adding that he has little
faith in medicines and believes he would suffer relapse.

For the scientists examining Heantos the scepticism 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's not interested in the possible money. ``I'm a
doctor. All I want is to cure people,'' he says. REUTER