Wow! Now this sounds very interesting to me, but conceptually, it makes sense.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Was it in Neuromancer where this is done to the protagonist against his will?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Potentially very good news for alot of people who are trying to stop smoking.
I wonder how applicable this approach would be for people addicted to prescription drugs. It might make them immune to narcotic pain killers which could be draw back if they are ever in severe pain.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
mr_poteiro_head, I'm not sure if it was specifically cocaine, but he was certainly inoculated against the effects of drugs.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Can't imagine how it makes sense. If opiates, nicotines, and cocaine weren't analogs for drugs naturally manufactured by the body to provide necessary functions, they wouldn't be addicting. About like the current US policy of committing genocide to combat drug growers.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Hyperbole much?
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
What they are describing appears to be molecule specific.
It's a good tool, but it's important for addicts to modify their underlying escape mentality if they are to avoid hopping from the frying pan into the fire.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
quote:Originally posted by pooka: It's a good tool, but it's important for addicts to modify their underlying escape mentality if they are to avoid hopping from the frying pan into the fire.
I agree, but the fact that it's such a gradual process makes me hopeful that the person would be receiving therapy during the process to help them deal with those issues.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I think I have a misunderstanding that someone could clear up.
I was under the impression that an allergic response was essentially a beefed up misfiring of the bodies own immune system including antibodies against something that it should not react against. The reason why you may get a fever, runny nose, etc if you have hay-fever is that your system is reacting to the small bits of pollen in the air. At the other extreme, your body can react to transplanted organs or blood transfusions of the wrong blood type to the extent that you can die without drugs that inhibit the bodies response.
So wouldn't a vaccine like this essentially create a reaction somewhere in the middle since you normally (I presume) use a lot more cocaine than the average person gets pollen (in terms of mass). So we're talking a hay fever from hell with the potential to be life threatening if an addict uses a lot in order to overcome the bodies resistance.
But I should be wrong since the article says nothing about side-effects and they have tested on humans presumably. So where am I going wrong with my impression? (I wish I took more biology on a level bigger than a cell)
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
There are over 6billion humans around with over 9billion expected within 40years, so the use of 'genocide' to describe democide and/or ethnic-cleansing is hyperbolic*. eg Rwanda and Sudan/Darfur are the result of extremely rapid population growth meeting the Malthusian limit. And the powers-that-be in those nations decided that it was a good idea to do some economic looting by inciting the negative emotions produced in people hitting that Malthusian wall. Even after the democide and ethnic cleansing, the ethnic populations were larger and the national populations were much larger than they were one generation before the mass-violence began. Looks like Kenya is on the brink of similar Malthusian warfare.
Admittedly FirstWorld-induced anthropogenic ClimateChange lowered the Malthusian limit in Darfur. And FirstWorld demand for the cash crops of Rwanda and the oil of Sudan funded&encouraged the powers-that-be into promoting democide and ethnic-cleansing for the purpose of making land grabs.
Genocide is about attempting to eliminate genes, genetic inheritance. And wiping out species ala the "War on Drugs" certainly eliminates such lines of inheritance.
* Excepting the Shoah/Holocaust genocide, in which the nazis did attempt to eliminate Jews and their genetic material in its entirety: including the genes of those who had foregone both the religion and the ethnic self-identification many generations previously. There may be some other examples, but I am not aware of historically reliable accounts of such.
[ January 30, 2008, 03:37 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
aspectre: Can't you see how the word loses meaning when we use it everytime somebodies ethnicity comes into play in their death?
Traditionally genocide was used to describe the consciously construted plan of killing an entire group of people, for example the Nazi's final solution, Rwanda, etc.
You are essentially saying that because the Columbian government is using herbicides that are dangerous to humans, and all the farmers who happen to be on those fields are of a relatively homogenous genetic disposition that therefore the Columbian government is committing genocide.
It does not make sense. You might as well argue that because US forces in WWII in the pacific front were only killing Japanese people, that therefore they are committing genocide.
Or heck, war = genocide.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
The body has several different immune pathways. Allergies are mediate by IgH, immunity to diseases is generally mediated by IgG or IgA. There is no reason to believe that this or any vaccine would cause you to develop and allergic reaction to a disease.
This cocaine vaccine works basically the same way that all vaccines work. They cause your body to create IgG or IgE antibodies that specifically recognize parts of the bacteria or virus that cause the disease. The molecules and the cells that make them remain active even after the disease is gone, thats why people normally only get things like the chicken pox once. After your body has seen the disease, it will keep recognizing it and fighting it for a long time. But antibodies are highly specific. An antibody for "measles" won't bind to "chicken pox" or your blood cells, cartilage, heart tissue . . . etc.
Sometimes the body mistakenly starts making antibodies (IgG and IgA) that recognize its own parts as foreign bodies, which is known as autoimmunity. This is the cause of a variety of disease including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, celiac disease, and type 1 diabetes. We don't really understand what causes the immune system to malfunction in this way but vaccines don't seem to be the cause.
There is no reason to expect this vaccine would be more likely to cause an autoimmune response than any other disease.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
In Rwanda and Darfur, the "ethnic" lines are the traditional haves vs the traditional have-nots. eg In Darfur, a farmer who becomes a herder (including through marriage) also changes from being "Black" to being "Arab". And visa versa. Similarly, the accumulation of wealth in Rwanda and the labels "Hutu" vs "Tutsi".
Which is why "the word [genocide] loses meaning when we use it everytime somebody's ethnicity comes into play in their death" was (one of) the point(s) of my posting.
[ January 30, 2008, 06:51 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
The Rabbit: I think you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about the body's reaction *to the vaccine*.
I'm talking about the body's reaction *to the cocaine* after the vaccine has finished doing its thing and made the body think that the heroin is now foreign.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
So was I Mucus. The bodies reaction to the cocaine after the vaccine was finished would be pretty simple. Antibodies would bind to the cocaine. The cocaine would then be phagocytized (eaten) by white blood cells and ultimately end up in the urine. The pathway in the immune system that causes all the allergy symptoms is a completely different pathway so there is no reason to expect people would have an allergic response to cocaine.
The problems that happen to people who have transplants occur because the body develops antibodies to the transplant and therefore begins to attack the transplant. Once again, this wouldn't be cause by have antibodies against cocaine.
Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
You'd react the same way you do to tetanus if you're exposed to it after your vaccination. You don't notice the response at all.
Although, I do wonder about how effective it is. I mean, generally when the body is mounting a response to a pathogen you haven't snorted a whole line of, say, malaria. That's a lot of particulate to take down.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
The Rabbit: Ok, I think I understand my point of misunderstanding. I thought that the difference in seriousness of the immune response between something like a flu and hay fever and then between something like hay hever and a new organ was simply due to that of the size of the foreign material.
What you're saying is that the immune response is actually different due to a different set of antibodies. Hmmm, so when someone gets a fever from the flu or a runny nose from the cold, are those mechanisms also separate from the the fever or runny nose you get if you get hay fever?
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Good to hear from you again, Bob the Lawyer. What I am skeptical about is... Vaccines target keys: ie different individual molecular structures protruding from bacterial and viral surfaces. In the case of a bacterium or a virus, there are multiple keys...some of which are not equivalent to keys which fit the body's cellular locks: ie cellular receptor sites. And those not equivalent can have an immunological*"target" painted on them by a vaccine without "painting a target" on the keys used in normal body processes.
It seems to me that molecules such as cocaine, cannibinoids, opiates, and nicitinoids (ie their active breakdown products) are too simple to have multiple keys. And that targeting their keys would also end up targeting the keys of analogous drugs produced by the body itself.
* More correctly, a vaccine causes the immune system to produce the antigen(s) which "paint" the pathogen's key(s) as target(s) for destruction&removal.
[ January 30, 2008, 06:56 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
quote:The cocaine would then be phagocytized (eaten) by white blood cells and ultimately end up in the urine.
For some reason this evoked an image of coked-up white blood cells, getting escorted to the kidneys for elimination.
I can see your point with opiates, aspectre, but I don't think cocaine is that similar to anything the body already produces.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
An example of extremely harmful reactions to synthetic antibodies that I suspect could occur. Even if similar reactions occurred vanishingly rarely with anti-drug antibodies, death or permanent disablement from such vaccinations would be an overly harsh punishment for drug abuse.
And lest I didn't make my other point clear, I do consider human-caused extinction of species to be a genocidal act.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Good to hear from you again, Bob the Lawyer. What I am skeptical about is... Vaccines target keys: ie different individual molecular structures protruding from bacterial and viral surfaces. In the case of a bacterium or a virus, there are multiple keys...some of which are not equivalent to keys which fit the body's cellular locks: ie cellular receptor sites. And those not equivalent can have an immunological*"target" painted on them by a vaccine without "painting a target" on the keys used in normal body processes.
It seems to me that molecules such as cocaine, cannibinoids, opiates, and nicitinoids (ie their active breakdown products) are too simple to have multiple keys. And that targeting their keys would also end up targeting the keys of analogous drugs produced by the body itself.
* More correctly, a vaccine causes the immune system to produce the antigen(s) which "paint" the pathogen's key(s) as target(s) for destruction&removal.
Is there ANYTHING you don't claim to be an expert in?
Or ever something you admit that someone, somewhere knows more about than you ?
I have yet to read a single post of yours that WASN'T filled hyperbole in all the years I have been posting here. Or at least a single topic you don't claim to have some sort of absurd inside scoop about.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
I have never claimed to be an expert in anything on any forum. Occupation: dilettente...Interests: ubiquitous And activelydiscourage such overestimation of my value by others. '
I do admit claiming the title of village idiot at one time or several on every forum in which I've posted regularly, and sometimes claiming to be the janitor* who mops up questions to which other regulars have not responded by providing speculation and keywords that might be useful in obtaining answers.
If I have left the misimpression of having personal expertise, thank you for pointing out otherwise. And I do mean that thanks with the greatest of sincerity.
* But not on this forum, which has always had an official Janitor since I first visited here.
[ January 30, 2008, 10:50 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
While that case is certainly a warning, it did NOT involve synthetic antibodies.
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
They have hapten-carrier studies where a variation consisting of the slightest position change in an COOH group does not cause cross-reactivity.
Further, epitopes can be complex 3d structures, allowing for a dazzling range of specificity. At the same time, of course, cross-reactivity can occur - case in point is Penicillin causing anti-myocaridal antibodies.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: I have never claimed to be an expert in anything on any forum. Occupation: dilettente...Interests: ubiquitous And activelydiscourage such overestimation of my value by others. '
I do admit claiming the title of village idiot at one time or several on every forum in which I've posted regularly, and sometimes claiming to be the janitor* who mops up questions to which other regulars have not responded by providing speculation and keywords that might be useful in obtaining answers.
If I have left the misimpression of having personal expertise, thank you for pointing out otherwise. And I do mean that thanks with the greatest of sincerity.
* But not on this forum, which has always had an official Janitor since I first visited here.
I stand corrected.
Posted by RackhamsRazor (Member # 5254) on :
quote: Allergies are mediate by IgH, immunity to diseases is generally mediated by IgG or IgA.
As far as I know, there is no such thing as IgH. IgE is the antibody made in the presence of an allergen by binding with mast cells and basophils.
The most common immunoglobulins are IgG (75% of serum Ig is IgG and is the major one in extracellular space), then IgA (found in secretions), then IgM (third most common Ig in serum).
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