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Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

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Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#171

Post by kstrauser »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #159
hasmolo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate?

- The black market is always cheaper. - Even in a legal market how many people are always buying their own? - If everything is legal then it's even easier for people to spike drinks and the like. - Purdue Pharma marketing issue writ large. - Patients pressuring their doctors to prescribe, or alternatively feeling pressured by their doctors to use a particular drug. - If it's legal it's easier to purposefully or accid…

That bit about Purdue resonates with me. I'm not firmly against legalization of harder drugs, but that's a case where average people given legal access to pharmaceutical-grade medicine through proper legal venues has been absolutely catastrophic. If I were making a case against legalization, that would be my Exhibit A.

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#172

Post by anonymouskimmer »

encoderer wrote: post #135
shaunxcode wrote: post #109

The real issue here that people don't seem to want to face is the WHY. Why do so many people want to check out of life completely by abusing medicine? If we don't address that nothing is going to stop the drug abuse let alone the relapse and overdose. I'm not talking about "more 12 step" here but more of a Frommian psychoanalytic approach. You are broken because society is broken. You have the ability to change yours…

Humans were not evolved to resist these kinds of poisons. Nothing like this exists in nature. It’s an extremely potent chemical.

It's not that nothing like this exists in nature, it's that evolutionarily speaking nothing like this existed in the areas human first evolved. Or if they did, we either evolved to resist them, thus no longer see them as toxic, or we're still in an arms race with the life that produces them (which means they would be much less toxic than fentanyl, but still toxic).

Plants (and fungi, and animals) evolved to create noxious chemicals that keep animals from eating them, keep animals from breeding, or outright kill the animals. The Golden Poison frog's toxin is about 40 times more lethal than fentanyl.

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#173

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

kstrauser wrote: post #165
LarryMullins wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to say this when you already know that you, personally, can resist the temptation of abusing drugs like Vicodin. Personally, I refuse all pain killers except OTC and local anesthetics like novocaine. I rather risk biting through my tongue than getting addicted to that shit.

I get that, but that doesn't mean there's no room for powerful painkillers for the situations that call for them. If someone dying from cancer wants to be stoned out of their minds to avoid the pain, I'm all for letting them. You and I don't want that because our current circumstances don't call for it. Someday, they might. If that day comes, I wouldn't want to live in a world without access to strong analgesics.

I think that the palliative care of a cancer patient is slightly different than a broken leg. Only one of these lead to the opioid crises.

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#174

Post by cwkoss »

calibas wrote: post #129
exabrial wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest becoming actually educated before developing strong opinions. The drug is extremely useful and saves lives in a clinical setting; chances are it will save your life or someone you know and love. It's literally used _every hour_ around the clock in ERs. Nearly all problematic Fentanyl in the US is illegally imported and created by third parties overseas. It is not manufactured by those big bad US Pharm…

Yes, most of the fentanyl that's abused comes from illegal sources. However, like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin, I put some of the responsibility on the people who created it and promoted its use in the first place. It's naive to think we could make "super heroin" and it would stay restricted to safe, controlled medical environments. I'm not convinced the good it does in certain cases outweighs the enormous har…

I don't think academic pharmacologists should try to avoid discovering drugs that have potential for abuse. They should be following medical efficacy - and it seems like generally they are.

Nobody was 'contracted to invent super heroin', they modified molecules with medical efficacy and tested to see which ones were also effective. Drug discovery is a much less deliberate process than you are making it sound.

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#175

Post by cmyr »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #159
hasmolo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate?

- The black market is always cheaper. - Even in a legal market how many people are always buying their own? - If everything is legal then it's even easier for people to spike drinks and the like. - Purdue Pharma marketing issue writ large. - Patients pressuring their doctors to prescribe, or alternatively feeling pressured by their doctors to use a particular drug. - If it's legal it's easier to purposefully or accid…

> - The black market is always cheaper.

anecdata: I'm in canada, which has legalized marijuana recently. The black market is cheaper, but all but the most die-hard stoners I know like to buy government weed, because the product is consistent and you know what you're getting.

> - Even in a legal market how many people are always buying their own?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but in a legal market even if I don't buy something directly at least I have vastly increased faith that i know what something is.

> - If everything is legal then it's even easier for people to spike drinks and the like.

Who knows, but I strongly doubt that there is a large pool of potential rapists at large who are currently stymied primarily due to the difficulty in acquiring GHB.

> - Purdue Pharma marketing issue writ large. > - Patients pressuring their doctors to prescribe, or alternatively feeling pressured by their doctors to use a particular drug.

There are definitely a bunch of social and policy questions that would need to be addressed when considering legalization, sure.

> - If it's legal it's easier to purposefully or accidentally overdose (e.g. alcohol today). Especially if it's also cheaper.

Almost certainly not, as the majority of overdoses are the consequence of people not knowing what they're taking, or not knowing how to take it.

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#176

Post by _yb2s »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #160
shaunxcode wrote: post #109

The real issue here that people don't seem to want to face is the WHY. Why do so many people want to check out of life completely by abusing medicine? If we don't address that nothing is going to stop the drug abuse let alone the relapse and overdose. I'm not talking about "more 12 step" here but more of a Frommian psychoanalytic approach. You are broken because society is broken. You have the ability to change yours…

> The real issue here that people don't seem to want to face is the WHY. Why do so many people want to check out of life completely by abusing medicine People start using drugs for different reasons. It's not correct to say that everyone starts abusing drugs as a form of pure escapism. A lot of drug users start because they're simply seeking recreation and someone is nearby to make drugs available to them. It's as si…

> Variations of this concept are frequently used by drug addicts to justify continued behavior. "It's not my fault, it's society's fault!". Taking ownership of actions and consequences is one of the key pivot points in helping people get control.

I don't think these are mutually exclusive. Society wide problems cause a huge fraction of the population to experience severe emotional trauma, and the process of addiction largely seems to be an experience of trying to escape the feelings associated with that. If you can understand this process, you can take ownership of it, and have a path to beating the addiction itself.

Ultimately, there is a lot of disagreement about what addiction is and how it really works, but I think this emotional trauma aspect is a key part of explaining why one person can use a drug recreationally or for medical purposes without addiction, and another can't. It explains a lot of weird observations that just didn't make sense with the classical chemical/neutrotransmitter model of addiction.

These links I think help explain this better than I can:

How Childhood Trauma Leads to Addiction - Gabor Maté https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVg2bfqblGI

Comic explaining the Rat Park research on addiction https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/

These ideas have explained why I personally have never been able to fight addictions through willpower alone, but have been able to eliminate addiction with other techniques that seem unrelated- therapy, meditation, exercise, hobbies, friends, ending bad relationships, etc. It seems that while chemical/physical addiction is a thing, emotionally and mentally healthy people don't experience opioids as a positive thing, such that the effect of the drug itself actually discourages it's use, and even motivates the experience of withdrawal.

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#177

Post by hammock »

kstrauser wrote: post #118
shaunxcode wrote: post #109

The real issue here that people don't seem to want to face is the WHY. Why do so many people want to check out of life completely by abusing medicine? If we don't address that nothing is going to stop the drug abuse let alone the relapse and overdose. I'm not talking about "more 12 step" here but more of a Frommian psychoanalytic approach. You are broken because society is broken. You have the ability to change yours…

They’re adding Fentanyl to everything now. I have Burning Man-adjacent friends who take ecstasy once a year at festivals, and they’re terrified of getting a tainted dose. This affects many more people than just those addicted to opiates.

Test strips: https://dancesafe.org/

Or on amazon

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#178

Post by hammock »

t433 wrote: post #139
kstrauser wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re adding Fentanyl to everything now. I have Burning Man-adjacent friends who take ecstasy once a year at festivals, and they’re terrified of getting a tainted dose. This affects many more people than just those addicted to opiates.

Legalize everything and produce it pharmaceutically, and this problems pretty much disappears.

>produce it pharmaceutically

They are... in Mexico... with expert training from China...

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#179

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

buzzert wrote: post #167
t433 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legalize everything and produce it pharmaceutically, and this problems pretty much disappears.

A better way to frame the drug legalization issue is, "should pharmaceutical companies be allowed to profit from incredibly addictive drugs?" Does that framing change your mind at all? Sure, small-time drug dealers are currently allowed to profit from it. Once they get big enough though, they're usually stopped by the DEA. The idea of giving this enormous profit incentive to multi-million dollar corporations with hug…

This is an inaccurate understanding of the drug economy. The drug cartels that supply the street dealers are multi billion dollar businesses rivaling the size of the big pharma corporations. And the DEA absolutely is not "usually stopping" them. They disrupt low and mid level arms of their operations with some regularity, but it does little to stem the rivers of money flowing towards the groups controlling the illicit drug trade at a high level.

Even if we presume that big pharma is a very corrupt industry and that allowing advertising of narcotics would increase drug use in some populations, bringing the production and distribution into a moderately well regulated market would likely cause a net reduction of usage and overall harm.

Re: Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats

#180

Post by yyyyyyy »

calibas wrote: post #129
exabrial wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest becoming actually educated before developing strong opinions. The drug is extremely useful and saves lives in a clinical setting; chances are it will save your life or someone you know and love. It's literally used _every hour_ around the clock in ERs. Nearly all problematic Fentanyl in the US is illegally imported and created by third parties overseas. It is not manufactured by those big bad US Pharm…

Yes, most of the fentanyl that's abused comes from illegal sources. However, like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin, I put some of the responsibility on the people who created it and promoted its use in the first place. It's naive to think we could make "super heroin" and it would stay restricted to safe, controlled medical environments. I'm not convinced the good it does in certain cases outweighs the enormous har…

> I put some of the responsibility on the people who created it and promoted it's use in the first place.

While there was a little bit of questionable marketing around some forms of fentanyl it was mostly around for the ride - the real blockbuster drugs leading to the medical establishment opioid crisis were hydrocodone, oxycodone and tramadol. Making fentanyl a scapegoat is misplaced.

The opioid epidemic did not need a "super heroin".

> It's naive to think we could make "super heroin" and it would stay restricted to safe, controlled medical environments

It's naive to think organized crime cartels would not have figured it out anyway.

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