May 4, 2003 9:10 AM

Protecting ourselves from ourselves?

"No" in a needle: New vaccines meant to block drug highs could help break a habit or keep one from starting

There's a time and a place for that, and it's called COLLEGE!

- "Chef", South Park

Interesting idea, this. Certainly, there are many potential benefits that might accrue from a vaccine that could block a drug's "high". The benefits for addicts alone might make pursuing this line of research worthwhile. There is also, unfortunately, a huge potential for abuse.

When Charles Schuster developed a vaccine that made monkeys immune to a heroin high, he hoped the work might someday help recovering addicts. But Schuster, now at Wayne State University, wasn't prepared for what happened next. "I began to get calls and plaintive letters from parents all over the world saying please won't you immunize my child so that they won't become a heroin addict," he recalls. The idea of using a vaccine to prevent rather than just treat addiction made Schuster "leery," and he dropped the research.

That was three decades ago. Now vaccines against vice are back, thanks to biotech firms that have spent years and millions in federal grant money pursuing them. Vaccines against cocaine and nicotine have just entered clinical trials, and ethicists wonder what will happen if they work. While traditional vaccines protect against diseases that no one wants to get, vice vaccines would fight pleasures that many people cherish in spite of their dangers. The shots might appeal not just to addicts trying to break a habit but also to parents, schools, and governments, raising issues of personal choice and social benefit so knotty that the National Academy of Sciences will hold a meeting this week to consider them.

It's not exactly a stretch to imagine the clamor from parents who will want to inoculate their children against the evils of drugs. While it would be difficult to question their desire to protect their children, this approach seems to me to border on child abuse. Whatever happened to teaching your children to make sound decisions? Yes, drugs can be destructive, but you cannot inoculate your children against every potential evil they will face in today's world (unprotected sex, credit cards, Karl Rove, etc.). Never mind the potential short-term or long-term side effects such a vaccine might have- and no one really know what those might be at this point. Are you really wiiling to risk your child's health to keep him or her from experiencing the effects of illegal drugs? In one sense, would this not be trading one drug for another?

Or is it just that it is simply easier for parents to inoculate their children? Certainly, one inoculation would be much less work than spending years educating, guiding, and loving a child, demonstrating that you know they will make the right choices because you've taught them about decisions and consequences.

But eventually, say ethicists, institutions struggling with drug abuse, from prisons to schools, might embrace them, and healthcare workers might urge them on pregnant women. Parents also might want to get their children vaccinated as a preventive measure. Nabi's Robert Naso is upfront about the company's interest in someday marketing an antinicotine vaccine to the parents of teens. "They'll still want to smoke at a party on Saturday night and look cool," Naso says. "But hopefully it will prevent them from becoming a two-pack-a-day addicted smoker." A cocaine vaccine might hold a similar appeal. "Imagine your kid is growing up in a rough neighborhood in Baltimore, where you have drug dealers all over," says Thomas Murray, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center. "Wouldn't you be tempted?"

Xenova's St Clair Roberts says that his company currently has no plans to market its cocaine vaccine for prevention. "I see that as being a nightmare," he says. Scientists working in the field are "absolutely" aware of all the tricky social issues their new vaccines might create, adds Paul Pentel of the University of Minnesota, who has studied Nabi's antinicotine vaccine. But they also see the shots as a potentially huge boon for treating addiction.

Medical ethicists will no doubt be struggling with this issue for some time to come. From where I sit, though, the ethics are already quite clear: forcing a child to get a vaccination that IS NOT MEDICALLY NECESSARY is child abuse- and a great way for a lazy parent to feel as if they are doing their job. That assessment may seem a bit harsh to some, but parenting is not an easy task, and there are no shortcuts. You're not going to find any in a needle, either.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on May 4, 2003 9:10 AM.

This is an April Fools joke, right? was the previous entry in this blog.

It figures that he'd be on Mike Ilitch's payroll is the next entry in this blog.

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