HEALTH

RESEARCHER VOLKOW TO HEAD INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE

A leading drug-addiction researcher who is a strong advocate of treating
addiction as a disease said she has accepted an offer to lead the U.S.
government's National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Nora Volkow, currently head of the medical department at the Brookhaven
National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., said a few details remain to be worked
out but she expects an announcement of her appointment soon.

Dr. Volkow, who is the great-granddaughter of Russian revolutionary Leon
Trotsky, was raised in Mexico City and earned her medical degree at the
National University of Mexico in 1980. She would be the first woman to lead
the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an arm of the National Institutes of
Health with a budget of $891 million in fiscal 2002.

A spokesman for the NIH declined to comment.

Dr. Volkow is one of the leading minds behind a new approach toward drug
addiction based on the notion that addiction produces permanent changes in
the brain of the addict. "Over the past five years, we've seen a dramatic
change in the view of drug addiction," Dr. Volkow said.

She believes doctors should treat addiction as they would other chronic
diseases of the brain such as schizophrenia, rather than assuming that
willpower alone could be a cure.

Among Dr. Volkow's achievements is a study showing that drug addicts have
fewer receptors in their brain for the pleasure-producing chemical
dopamine, driving them to use dopamine-producing drugs such as cocaine. She
has also studied the effect of love and food on the brain, publishing a
study last year showing that the mere sight of a tasty meal causes the
brain to react with pleasure.

The previous director of the drug-abuse institute, Alan Leshner, was also a
strong proponent of the disease model and pushed for the development of
medications to treat addicts. Dr. Leshner stepped down in 2001 and Glen
Hanson has been acting director since then.