Scripps is doing it again and is going to town on their new invention, the HEROIN vaccine. Its passed a lot of the testing and is soon ready for human trials.How does it work?? The vaccine basically forces the immune system to make antibodies that attack the heroin molecule and prevent it from going into the brain. It’s very similar to all vaccines. For example we have vaccines against chickenpox. The immune system builds antibodies that latch onto chicken pox and destroy it. The heroin vaccine is very much the same. It’s like creating guard dogs that attack and lock on to heroin molecules and prevent them from going to the brain to kill you.
Now, will that fix our opiate epidemic?? It will help but it will simply not do everything. As long as we don’t address the problem underlying the addiction (like depression, anxiety, family trauma, sexual abuse history etc) people will simply switch from one opiate to another one. Or simply to another drug, like alcohol or benzos.
The short summary is this: its an awesome idea and may help with ONE of the many chemicals but wont address the bottom line right? We all know we have to treat the underlying problem.