5 ms·
This is an opinion piece that doesn't even look at the science. The ClinicalTrials.gov entry they link to as their source only lists one peer-reviewed study, an
by skue 15y ago
This is an opinion piece that doesn't even look at the science. The ClinicalTrials.gov entry they link to as their source only lists one peer-reviewed study, and its conclusion is this (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19805702 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19805702):
Attaining high (>or=43 microg/mL) IgG anticocaine antibody
levels was associated with significantly reduced cocaine
use, but only 38% of the vaccinated subjects attained
these IgG levels and they had only 2 months of adequate
cocaine blockade
That's not a stellar success. More importantly, if the Phase I trial revealed that some addicts had up to 5x the level of cocaine in their systems that's a big deal!
Cocaine doesn't just do damage to your brain. It can trigger heart attacks and death by causing the blood vessels that feed your heart to spasm and reduce blood flow. If a person under 40 walks into the ER and complains of chest pain, one of the first questions any competent doc will ask is whether they have recently used cocaine.
Apparently, they didn't see increased mortality in the small sample of people they studied -- but that doesn't mean it wouldn't kill significant numbers of people when deployed across a sizeable population.
So in summary, we have a vaccine that's immunologically ineffective on the majority of recipients, which doesn't eliminate their cocaine use (just reduces it, p=0.048), and which can cause some users to boost their cocaine ingestion to very dangerous levels, and thereby quite possibly increasing cardiac morbidity and mortality (which the vaccine producer may be found liable for).
Why aren't pharma companies lining up to produce this remarkable invention? It must be a conspiracy!!!
Edit: Fixed formatting of quote.
- Daniel_Newby 15y agoCocaine doesn't just do damage to your brain. It can trigger heart attacks and death by causing the blood vessels that feed your heart to spasm and reduce blood flow. Free cocaine does that. This immunization causes the body to produce cocaine-sequestering antibodies. ... some addicts had up to 5x the level of cocaine in their systems ... To understand the implications of that ratio, you need to know the total cocaine binding capacity, which would require considerably more exotic laboratory tests.
- skue 15y agoA good point, but antibody sequestration isn't how they explained the vaccine's actions. Instead it's that the cocaine-antibody complex is too large to cross the blood-brain barrier. So it's unclear whether the antibody response (which the study showed was limited) would sequester the cocaine enough to eliminate its systemic effects.
- Daniel_Newby 15y ago... the cocaine-antibody complex is too large to cross the blood-brain barrier. If the cocaine were weakly bound, it would spend part of its time detached from the antibodies, and during those times be able to enter the brain in the usual way. Since the antibodies have a large effect on the psychological effect-response curve, the binding must be quite strong. Therefore cocaine is sequestered throughout the body.
- andrewflnr 15y agoI would really hope the pharma company couldn't be held liable. It's not like increased cocaine usage is a side-effect. It's a voluntary response to the drug's stated purpose. Of course you never know if common sense will actually be applied in such a case.
- Symmetry 15y agoIts not so much a matter of it causing legal problems directly, as much as the press getting wind and starting in investigation that causes people to demand that their elected officals Do Something. Remember a while back when those anti-depressants were found to be associated with increased suicide risk? I was surprised that there was an outcry since "A dangerous time in depression occurs when a patient is coming out of the deepest part of the experience. At that point, they can mobilize their newly acquired energy to take their own life."[1] But, I never saw anything about that aspect in the news coverage. [1]http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/288598-overview#aw2aab6b3 http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/288598-overview#aw2aab...