p2pnet news | Off Topic:- It’s called nose candy, Peruvian marching powder, Lady Jane, and a whole raft of other names. Songs have been written about it. In the mid 1800s, Albert Niemann of Gottingen University wrote a "slim volume" about it, winning his PhD.

Niemann called it ‘cocaine,’ and "I take very small doses of it regularly and against depression and against indigestion, and with the most brilliant success", said another doctor, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.

And in the 21st century, as crack as well as snort, it’s probably responsible for more human misery then any other street drug.

But psychiatry professor Dr Tom Kosten and his wife, Dr Therese Kosten, a neuroscientist and psychologist, believe that after ten years, they’ve found a way to help some people rid themselves of the deadly addiction.

And it’s a vaccine.

"At some point, most users will give in to temptation and relapse, but those for whom the vaccine is effective won’t get high and will lose interest," says Kosten, who teaches at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, in dbTechno.

In Showbiz Spy, Baylor neuroscientist David Eagleman hails it as "very clever idea," stating, "Scientists have spent the last few decades figuring out reward pathways in the brain and how drugs like cocaine hijack the system. It turns out those pathways are difficult to rewire once they’ve seen the drug. But the vaccine just circumvents all that."

But Dr David Gorelick of the National Institute on Drug Abuse isn’t so sure.

"Addiction vaccines are a promising advance," dbTechno has him saying, going on, "but it’s unlikely any treatment in this field will work for everyone. Still, if they prove successful, thyy will give those working in drug addiction an important option."

Slashdot it!

Also see:
cocaine – A Spoonful of Sugar?
dbTechno – New Vaccine May Cure Cocaine Addiction, January 3, 2008
Showbiz Spy – Researchers working on vaccine to cure cocaine addiction, January 3, 2008

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 6:22 am and is filed under Off Topic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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