High Immunity: Drugs Fight Addiction and Fun

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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.

Discuss at the Parenting conference in Cafe Utne: www.utne.com/salon.aspx

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