WEIRD SCIENCE?

The world of medicine seems to be getting quackier and quackier as rapidly
advancing cures and medicines meet myth and marketing. Diet pills, hangover
cures, and sexual dysfunction treatments spew from the medical-industrial
complex, graying the lines between science and selling. It is against this
backdrop that the Orange County-based Waismann Institute's "rapid detox"
for heroin addicts has inspired awe and doubt.

Its proponents claim the core of the Waismann Method takes only 20 minutes
and involves putting an opiate or pain-killer addict under anesthesia, and
using a combination of drugs to cleanse the patient's body. The method
compresses the painful withdrawal period into a matter of minutes and
spares addicts from the pain usually associated with the experience because
they are unconscious for about an hour. Patients can be discharged after
about a day, but must continue taking a drug called naltrexone to,
according to an account in Wired magazine, block the effects of illicit
narcotic use should a patient relapse.

Proponents of the method claim a 65 percent success rate after just one
year, far greater than the 30 to 40 percent success rates of methadone
treatment and 12-step programs. Waismann's believers say it's all in how
addiction is viewed. They say the traditional way of treating addiction --
12-step programs -- involves a belief in spiritual and mental change, but
has little to do with science. Waismann, they say, is a medical treatment
that looks directly at the biology and chemistry of addiction and does
something about it. "Physical opiate dependency is a central nervous system
disorder that can be reversed with appropriate, physician-administered
medical treatment," states the official Waismann philosophy. "Patients
deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and compassion, rather than
contempt and alienation."

Some critics say the method amounts to a money-making Band-Aid, but the
American Society of Addiction Medicine reportedly supports the treatment.
Waismann's principals are Clifford A. Bernstein, an assistant clinical
professor of anesthesiology at UC Irvine, and Michael H. Lowenstein, also
an anesthesiologist.

"The 12-step program is an outdated 20th-century concept," Bernstein told
Wired. "For 70 years, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous, addicts have been
told they're suffering from a spiritual problem. AA assumes that you can
talk someone out of their addiction -- which is ridiculous. Addiction is a
medical problem. If somebody has cancer, you don't try to talk them out of
their disease."