Coke
posted by Driusan on January 8th, 2008 at 12:27AM
posted by Driusan on January 8th, 2008 at 12:27AM
I think http://www.theglobeandmai...ry/National/home this might be one of the stupidest news articles I've read in the Globe in a long time.. and the Globe prints some pretty stupid things, especially when it comes to science.
Let's just ennumerate some of the stupid things it says from a /cursory/ readthrough:
Two Baylor College of Medicine scientists based in Houston have developed a cocaine vaccine that creates antibodies that bind to the drug and prevent it from travelling from the bloodstream to the brain.
What? Cocaine is usually snorted. It doesn't go through the blood stream, it goes through the nose directly to the brain. It can be smoked, in which case I suppose it would go through the bloodstream, but that isn't very common among any coke users that I know/know of.
Unable to penetrate the brain, the drug can produce no high.
A does not logically follow from B.
"[..] We had always thought of altering the brain as a way to prevent drug abuse.[..]"
Your motivation for science is that you've always thought of /artificially altering other people's brains/ to stop the effects of (in this case) naturally occuring substances? That's.. kind of scary.
"If it's approved in the U.S., then getting approval in Canada won't be that difficult," he said, adding that, if all goes well, a cocaine vaccine could be available in the United States in four years.
4 years? You expect to be able to accurately judge the long term affects of tricking the immune system into thinking something is a virus in 4 years?
I guess that's not entirely unplausable. I'm no scientician, but with my limited knowledge of neurochemistry which doesn't even go beyond the undergrad level I can list off the top of my head:
It's likely to cause an increase in the prevalence of Parkinson's Disease (short term), depression (short-midterm), or schizophrenia (long term) among people who are given the "vaccine."
An addict is, by definition, someone whose brain chemistry has been altered by the drug so that the brain doesn't produce the dopamine that it otherwise would have. So in the short term, we'll have Parkinson's Disease symptoms showing up (Parkinson's is caused by a lack of dopamine, which is now neither being produced by the brain nor having its reuptake inhibited by the drug) and depression (also linked to dopamine levels) caused by withdrawl. As the brain readjusts, it's possible that it will overcompensate causing levels to raise higher than they should causing manic episodes and schizophrenia symptoms (both of which are linked to increased levels of dopamine).
But I haven't done any research and I'm no scientist, I'm just guessing here.
"Because there are no treatments for cocaine addiction, it's been one of their fast-tracked programs at the FDA," Dr. Kosten said. He is also at work on vaccines for heroin, nicotine and methamphetamine.
What? There are no treatments for cocaine addiction? What are all the people who work down the street from me at CAMH doing?
"From a societal perspective, cocaine is one of the drugs that continue to be overlooked as one of the big problem drugs in our society," said Dr. Wood, a physician epidemiologist at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
lolwhat. When I think of the three drugs considered "big problem drugs in our society" the three that come to mind are 1. Heroin 2. Meth 3. Cocaine.. and what the hell is "Excellence in HIV/AIDS"?
"Crack cocaine is what is driving many of the social problems and public order problems and crime problems, particularly in the Downtown Eastside [of Vancouver]."
Wait, the whole time talking about /crack/, not /cocaine/? Well that's a bit like developing a wonderful cure for alcoholism and then telling people that it'll only work for wormwood absinthe, isn't it?
Let's pretend he said "correlated with" instead of "driving" the problems since a million people have argued about if the cause is the drugs or the prohibition a million times without getting anywhere. (Afterall, the only place we can look to for experimental causal data is alcohol prohibition in the states..)
Dr. Wood said the "explosive HIV outbreak" in Vancouver's east side is largely attributed to heroin users switching to cocaine, which leads to "more frequent injections, more chaotic behaviour and more syringe sharing."
As I already pointed out, cocaine is snorted, not injected. If, for some reason, heroin users all switched to cocaine we would have /less/ spread of HIV since no needles are getting shared.
Since cocaine molecules are so small, the immune system does not recognize them and cannot make antibodies to attack them.
What? The immune system doesn't recognize them because it isn't a virus. It's an effect on neurochemicals caused as a byproduct of dietary intake originally (when cocoa leaves were chewed by natives) and then chemically refined in modern times. It doesn't fight them for the same reason it doesn't fight caffeine or alcohol.
To fix that problem, Dr. Kosten attached inactivated cocaine to the outside of inactivated cholera proteins.
The problem of the immune system not doing a job it was never evolved to do?
Gerald Sidel, director of Addington Addiction Treatment Centre in Montreal, said yesterday that everybody is looking for the "magic bullet" to treat addictions.
I'm not. I just want a magic bullet to treat poor research--either scientific or journalistic.
He compared using modified cocaine to treat cocaine addicts to allowing alcoholics to engage in controlled drinking.
My god, wouldn't that be a /horrible/ concept if there was a way to get alcoholics to engage in controlled drinking?
Certainly if there is a way of helping people, I am not adverse to that," Mr. Sidel said in a telephone interview yesterday. "But don't treat drug addicts with drugs."
Uh, why not? It's been done for hundreds of years, at least (morphine to treat alcoholism, heroin to treat morphine addiction, methadone to treat heroin or morphine addiction in modern day.) When people go into rehab and are given lower doses of what they're addicted to to prevent withdrawl and relapse? Also a horrible idea.
Morons.
Let's just ennumerate some of the stupid things it says from a /cursory/ readthrough:
Two Baylor College of Medicine scientists based in Houston have developed a cocaine vaccine that creates antibodies that bind to the drug and prevent it from travelling from the bloodstream to the brain.
What? Cocaine is usually snorted. It doesn't go through the blood stream, it goes through the nose directly to the brain. It can be smoked, in which case I suppose it would go through the bloodstream, but that isn't very common among any coke users that I know/know of.
Unable to penetrate the brain, the drug can produce no high.
A does not logically follow from B.
"[..] We had always thought of altering the brain as a way to prevent drug abuse.[..]"
Your motivation for science is that you've always thought of /artificially altering other people's brains/ to stop the effects of (in this case) naturally occuring substances? That's.. kind of scary.
"If it's approved in the U.S., then getting approval in Canada won't be that difficult," he said, adding that, if all goes well, a cocaine vaccine could be available in the United States in four years.
4 years? You expect to be able to accurately judge the long term affects of tricking the immune system into thinking something is a virus in 4 years?
I guess that's not entirely unplausable. I'm no scientician, but with my limited knowledge of neurochemistry which doesn't even go beyond the undergrad level I can list off the top of my head:
It's likely to cause an increase in the prevalence of Parkinson's Disease (short term), depression (short-midterm), or schizophrenia (long term) among people who are given the "vaccine."
An addict is, by definition, someone whose brain chemistry has been altered by the drug so that the brain doesn't produce the dopamine that it otherwise would have. So in the short term, we'll have Parkinson's Disease symptoms showing up (Parkinson's is caused by a lack of dopamine, which is now neither being produced by the brain nor having its reuptake inhibited by the drug) and depression (also linked to dopamine levels) caused by withdrawl. As the brain readjusts, it's possible that it will overcompensate causing levels to raise higher than they should causing manic episodes and schizophrenia symptoms (both of which are linked to increased levels of dopamine).
But I haven't done any research and I'm no scientist, I'm just guessing here.
"Because there are no treatments for cocaine addiction, it's been one of their fast-tracked programs at the FDA," Dr. Kosten said. He is also at work on vaccines for heroin, nicotine and methamphetamine.
What? There are no treatments for cocaine addiction? What are all the people who work down the street from me at CAMH doing?
"From a societal perspective, cocaine is one of the drugs that continue to be overlooked as one of the big problem drugs in our society," said Dr. Wood, a physician epidemiologist at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
lolwhat. When I think of the three drugs considered "big problem drugs in our society" the three that come to mind are 1. Heroin 2. Meth 3. Cocaine.. and what the hell is "Excellence in HIV/AIDS"?
"Crack cocaine is what is driving many of the social problems and public order problems and crime problems, particularly in the Downtown Eastside [of Vancouver]."
Wait, the whole time talking about /crack/, not /cocaine/? Well that's a bit like developing a wonderful cure for alcoholism and then telling people that it'll only work for wormwood absinthe, isn't it?
Let's pretend he said "correlated with" instead of "driving" the problems since a million people have argued about if the cause is the drugs or the prohibition a million times without getting anywhere. (Afterall, the only place we can look to for experimental causal data is alcohol prohibition in the states..)
Dr. Wood said the "explosive HIV outbreak" in Vancouver's east side is largely attributed to heroin users switching to cocaine, which leads to "more frequent injections, more chaotic behaviour and more syringe sharing."
As I already pointed out, cocaine is snorted, not injected. If, for some reason, heroin users all switched to cocaine we would have /less/ spread of HIV since no needles are getting shared.
Since cocaine molecules are so small, the immune system does not recognize them and cannot make antibodies to attack them.
What? The immune system doesn't recognize them because it isn't a virus. It's an effect on neurochemicals caused as a byproduct of dietary intake originally (when cocoa leaves were chewed by natives) and then chemically refined in modern times. It doesn't fight them for the same reason it doesn't fight caffeine or alcohol.
To fix that problem, Dr. Kosten attached inactivated cocaine to the outside of inactivated cholera proteins.
The problem of the immune system not doing a job it was never evolved to do?
Gerald Sidel, director of Addington Addiction Treatment Centre in Montreal, said yesterday that everybody is looking for the "magic bullet" to treat addictions.
I'm not. I just want a magic bullet to treat poor research--either scientific or journalistic.
He compared using modified cocaine to treat cocaine addicts to allowing alcoholics to engage in controlled drinking.
My god, wouldn't that be a /horrible/ concept if there was a way to get alcoholics to engage in controlled drinking?
Certainly if there is a way of helping people, I am not adverse to that," Mr. Sidel said in a telephone interview yesterday. "But don't treat drug addicts with drugs."
Uh, why not? It's been done for hundreds of years, at least (morphine to treat alcoholism, heroin to treat morphine addiction, methadone to treat heroin or morphine addiction in modern day.) When people go into rehab and are given lower doses of what they're addicted to to prevent withdrawl and relapse? Also a horrible idea.
Morons.
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posted by anon1 on January 17th, 2008 at 9:28PM
Actually a third way to do coke IS to inject it (and I'm talking cocaine and not crack). Once mixed with plain water, coke can be injected directly into the bloodstream and travels very very quickly to the brain.
Mixed too weak and you get a bad taste in your mouth and a mild high...mixed too strong and it can cause your heart feel like it's about to explode, your brain to almost shut down leading to seizures and possibly stop breathing. It's not a method that's widely talked about and sort of "frowned upon" but the high hits you faster and lasts longer. |
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posted by dsk on January 8th, 2008 at 11:45AM
So whats the real story behind this vaccine?
Also, science stories are generally horrible in mainstream media.
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