A while back I linked to a story about treatments that had been created that may be able to "immunize" people against drugs. The British government is apparently looking at using them to vaccinate children.
A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by ministers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
Under the plans, doctors would immunise children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection. The scheme could operate in a similar way to the current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme.
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.
The Department of Trade and Industry has set up a special project to investigate ways of using new scientific breakthroughs to combat drug and nicotine addiction.
A national anti-drug immunisation scheme is one of the proposals being put forward by the Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs project, an expert committee of scientists appointed by the Government earlier this year.
Professor David Nutt, a leading government drugs adviser who sits on the committee, told the IoS that anti-drug vaccines for children are likely to be among the panel's recommendations when it reports next March.
Professor Nutt, head of psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol and a senior member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said: "People could be vaccinated against drugs at birth as you are against measles. You could say cocaine is more dangerous than measles, for example. It is important that there is a debate on this issue. This is a huge topic - addiction and smoking are major causes of premature death."
I have no problem with an adult voluntarily deciding to take the treatment. Doing it to children under the legal age of consent, or forcing it on people I think is a problem though.
I don't see it as that much of a problem, really. If I knew that I could give my kid a shot and almost gaurentee that he wouldn't waste his life in drug abuse - regardless of how I raise him (how many snooty ich kids enjoy life on a cocane ride) - I would gladly give it to him or her as another way to protect him/her.
Akaran of Mistmoore, formerly Akaran of Veeshan I know I'm good at what I do, but I know I'm not the best.
But I guess that on the other hand, I could be like the rest.
Yeah, I was under the impression that Christian religions stress that whole "god gave us free will" thing for a reason. Perhaps I misunderstood?
By the by, there is a difference between "wasting your life in drug abuse" and responsibly enjoying drugs or using drugs to alleviate a medical or psychological problem, etc.
I still have yet to see a convincing argument as to why all of the illegal drugs are inherently bad, other than people having been conditioned to believe that.
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."- Barack Obama
If they are treating them like other immunization shots then Americans have the right to refuse them. I don't plan to give my child any immunizations before they are at least 6 months to a year old and then only if there is an outbreak. Some of the shit resulting from immunizing is quite bad. For instance, nearly every case of polio diagnosed in the last 30 years came from kids who had been vaccinated. The only immunization I might consider giving is the the one for Whooping Cough since I know that it si currently going around again.
Ok, so I won't immunize my child against the measels and if he wants to play with measle infected children, I'm all for it.
Oh wait..
Akaran of Mistmoore, formerly Akaran of Veeshan I know I'm good at what I do, but I know I'm not the best.
But I guess that on the other hand, I could be like the rest.
Akaran_D wrote:Ok, so I won't immunize my child against the measels and if he wants to play with measle infected children, I'm all for it.
Oh wait..
There is a difference between measels which gets transmitted involuntarily and drugs which are taken voluntarily (unless someone is forcing someone to take drugs, but that is a case to stop the forcing, not to make the drugs ineffective).
That's a completely different situation. Measles is an illness that you can catch, drug use is not. For example, what are your feelings on medicinal marijuana? Do you believe those people who say that it helps with regaining appetite and relieving discomfort and nausea for people who are on chemotherapy? What if your child, god forbid, came down with some form of cancer and one of the easily available methods of relief for the child could not be used because you decided that giving them some sort of drug (i.e. the "vaccination") was a more effective means of preventing drug use than education and communcation would be?
And it's also not a bad idea to question whether or not you should have your children vaccinated, as there is believed to be a link between vaccinations and autism in children. Though I think most of that is believed to have been caused by mercury or something that was being used as a preservative in the vaccinations and is no longer used, but it's still something to consider.
I'm not trying to say that vaccinations are bad or that drug use is good, I'm trying to say that neither are cut-and-dry, black-and-white. Don't believe that one is totally good and the other is totally bad just because you have been told that it is.
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."- Barack Obama
So.. we have a method that stops people from feeling the "high" attributed to coke, X, and who knows what else and therby completely removes the reason for them to take it, and it's being slammed because it's a method of not giving them the choice to fuck themselves up right off the bat?
I see where Sylvus is comming in terms of using stuff like weed for medicinal purposes, but crack and other drugs? It's illegal, habit forming and deadly; there's at least one good reason in there to promote anything that nulls their effects.. isn't there?
edit: My kid may choose to kill him or herself, but I would have failed as a parent if I didn't do everything I could to stop them.
Akaran of Mistmoore, formerly Akaran of Veeshan I know I'm good at what I do, but I know I'm not the best.
But I guess that on the other hand, I could be like the rest.
I can't wait until all the kids vaccinated against drugs turn into psychopaths because of some unforseen side effect that prevents them from feeling anything.
Anything that fucks with a child's neural receptors is BAD, be it a drug or a "vaccine."
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
I can see the good parts of it, however, just like the software manufactures think they have finally figured a way to prevent their software from being copied, the hackers always find new ways around it.
My point being, you do this to your child, and by the time they are 15 years old, a whole new line of designer drugs will be out there that can get around the immunization the child got 10 years ago.
Plus, what if it deadens the ability to achieve natural highs from sex, running, fear, etc.
The sad part is I'm being more of a conservative than Midnyte this time.
/goes to go topple boxes of shoes atop his head
Akaran of Mistmoore, formerly Akaran of Veeshan I know I'm good at what I do, but I know I'm not the best.
But I guess that on the other hand, I could be like the rest.
having free will means you are capable of making good decisions as well as bad ones. free will is one of those things that us liebrals tend to value I guess. have fun with your robotic children though.
Drasta wrote:so basically they can get high all they want and not be addicted?
That worked for me without taking a vaccine! Responsible, controlled quantities for infrequent recreational use are a more reasonable solution.
I feel the same way as Sylvus here:
I think that we have better control and regulation over the legal drugs (nicotine, caffine, and alcohol) than we do over the illegal ones. Furthermore, it would be an incredible financial move for the governments to go from spending billions on fighting drugs to earning billions taxing the fuck out of them!
I still would like to see one valid reason for why drugs should even be illegal, rather than regulated by the government. Government regulation (following the model of alcohol and/or smokes) would all but eradicate crime associated with drugs. Government regulation would also help to eliminate a lot of the things added to different drugs that make them dangerous or more dangerous to take.
If crack were much less likely to kill someone who used it, and people weren't killing or stealing from other people in order to get it, can anyone give me a good reason as to why it is bad? As it is now, a lot of people show contempt for drug users, why? Some people have fun bungee jumping off of a bridge, some people have fun singing in church, others want to smoke a joint to have fun. What is the inherent difference that makes two of those legitimate pastimes and the other an abhorrent activity?
I won't consider "because it's bad for you" a valid reason either. Cigarettes, alcohol and fatty foods each cause or contribute to more deaths each year than all of the other drugs have ever caused, combined.
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."- Barack Obama
I can't see bunjee jumping as "good for you" either. You tie one loose anchor, and you's daid boy.
We let people do things that are bad for them all the time. The bias against drugs comes from decades of misinformation (from our government of all fucking places) and ignorance.
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
I am of mixed minds on this, but I think it would be silly to do, I could see it being court ordered in the case of someone like Courtney Love, but preemptively? I cannot see a defined medical need and it would in fact being doing harm to a patient (injecting them with an engineered substance) without a proven need, and seems a little against the oath.
She Dreams in Digital
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
archeiron wrote:
I think that we have better control and regulation over the legal drugs (nicotine, caffine, and alcohol) than we do over the illegal ones. Furthermore, it would be an incredible financial move for the governments to go from spending billions on fighting drugs to earning billions taxing the fuck out of them!
archeiron wrote:
I think that we have better control and regulation over the legal drugs (nicotine, caffine, and alcohol) than we do over the illegal ones. Furthermore, it would be an incredible financial move for the governments to go from spending billions on fighting drugs to earning billions taxing the fuck out of them!
Hemp is also better for paper then tree's!
This fact has been suggested as one of the major contributing factors to cannibis being made illegal. The paper lobby has had suprising political sway. I am more interested in whether that laws should be repealled rather than why they were brought in originally. The double standard applied to various narcotics is illogical and internally inconsistent; our body of laws should not be inconsistent and contradictory.
