Heroin Vaccine: May Stop Pain Meds from Working and Destroy Ability to Feel Pleasure

A patent has been issued to a Mexican researcher for a heroin vaccine. There’s very little available about it so far, though the press has been treating it like a panacea. It’s being billed as a treatment for addicts, something that would keep them from craving narcotics. But is that a realistic scenario?

The vaccine would work by forcing the body to create antibodies to heroin. These antibodies would attack heroin molecules that enter the body. The heroin molecules would be unable to attach to opioid receptors, so opium cravings could not be satisfied and it would be impossible to get high from the drug.

The concept is fairly straightforward—but nothing else about it is. It presents a picture of happy narcotics addicts who go on with their lives, free of cravings. Somehow, the inability to satisfy cravings for the heroin high are going to end when the ability to satisfy those cravings is destroyed. That, at least, seems to be the theory.

But it makes no sense. The underlying reason for wanting an escape isn’t remedied. No consideration is given to the misery of withdrawal. We aren’t told whether the vaccine would be associated with only heroin, or if it might also be effective against morphine, opium, or any other narcotic. If it’s effective against only heroin, or possibly just a single variety of heroin, then the vaccine will be useless against any other narcotic.

Loss of Opiate Analgesia?

It might, though, be worse if the vaccine is effective against a range of narcotics. What becomes of the person who’s taken the vaccine, but requires surgery or develops a painful condition? How is that person’s pain to be controlled?

Opiates are the most effect method of controlling pain. Morphine is standard for controlling pain after surgery, and pain patients can be dependent on opiates for their survival. If opiate molecules are destroyed by antibodies, will pain patients be left to suffer?

Sudden Severe Withdrawal in Addicts?

The researchers say that mice addicted to heroin gave up their craving. While that sounds impressive, we’re given no details of their experiment. Did the mice immediately stop seeking heroin, or did it take some time before they realized that it wouldn’t provide what they needed, so gave up searching? It seems rather unlikely that they’d have stopped wanting the drug, since their receptors would have been starved for it. What did those mice go through? What was their withdrawal like? The researchers are silent on those points.

Loss of Pleasure

What happens to a person’s ability to have pleasure? That could be the most significant problem with a heroin vaccine.

Opiates act by triggering receptors in the body that recognize endorphins, the body’s natural pleasure-inducing molecules. Exercise causes our bodies to produce endorphins, which bind to the same receptors that opiates do. These receptors are, in fact, misnamed—called opiate receptors for their association with heroin and other opium-related narcotics, rather than what they are: endorphin pleasure receptors. Their purpose isn’t to initiate feelings of pleasure and happiness from opiates. Their purpose is to trigger those sensations as the result of endorphins produced by the body. Exercise, laughter, and sexual intercourse produce them, which is why we find those activities so intensely pleasurable.

So what happens to endorphins in a person vaccinated against pleasure-producing heroin? If the heroin molecule attaches to the same receptors as endorphins, it must be quite similar to endorphins. Will the body know the difference? Or will the anti-opiate antibodies also act against endorphins? Will the vaccine trigger an autoimmune disorder that prevents pleasure?

Do the researchers care, or are they primarily concerned with the profits they hope to make from their vaccine?

Vaccinating Children

The concerns and sufferings of addicts tend to be discounted. If a heroin vaccine truly is found to be effective at keeping addicts from using their drug, the potential horrific harm would likely be ignored. It would likely be covered up long enough for Big Pharma to launch a campaign to vaccinate all children against heroin addiction.

You can picture it now: Advertisements would make it clear that no mother would want to leave her child open to the ravages of addiction. They’d be told by their doctors that they owe it to their sons and daughters to assure that they’d never become addicted. How long would it take for the vaccine to be included in the CDC’s vaccination schedule for children? Considering how quickly the Gardasil vaccine was pushed, it probably wouldn’t take long.

Vaccines are treated as safe by definition. There is little research for evidence of either their efficacy or adverse effects before they’re foisted on our children. What are the chances that the potential for harm would be ignored in a rush to “protect our children from the horrors of addiction”?

The Vaccination Rush

Big Pharma is developing more and more vaccines now. It’s becoming their profit center as the days of blockbuster drugs are drawing to a close. New methods of developing vaccines make them relatively cheap, and looser regulation makes them easy to get through approval processes. Anything that Big Pharma can imagine as a vaccine target is now on the table.

The attempt to develop vaccines for drug addictions are a primary example of what’s wrong with Big Pharma’s and the Modern Medical Mafia’s approach to health. Rather than looking at the causes of disease, they focus on symptoms and set about to suppress them. In addiction, the question that needs to be asked, answered, and then resolved is, “Why do people become addicts? What is wrong in their lives?”

Addiction is a symptom of an individual living in a society that has become increasingly inhospitable. The problem isn’t resolved by keeping the addict from obtaining pleasure. Indeed, it will likely make the situation worse. Since there’s no consideration for why a person feels the need to escape from life into pleasure-for-pleasure’s-sake, what will that person turn to instead? We don’t know—and I shudder at the thought of discovering what it will be.

Sources: 

• How Drugs Affect Neurotransmitters
• Heroin in the Brain
• Infofacts: Heroin
• The lowdown on that heroin vaccine everyone’s talking about
• Breakthrough Heroin Vaccine Could Render Drug ‘Useless’ in Addicts
• Scientists Create Vaccine Against Heroin High
• Mexican researchers patent heroin vaccine
• Vaccine to beat heroin addiction ‘is just 5 years away’

 

Tagged big pharma, conventional medicine, endorphin addiction, endorphin opiate, endorphin receptor, endorphins pleasure, fda, heroin pain, heroin vaccination, heroin vaccine, morphine pain, opium pain, opium pleasure, pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceuticals, vaccine, vaccines