Drug Vaccination
I was listing to a podcast, and one of the speakers mentioned that the government has successfully developed potential anti-drug vaccinations. This may be old news to some, but this is scary enough that it is worth bringing up anyway. This article is from 2004; http://www.alternet.org/drugs/19520/
Another more recent article; http://reason.com/blog/2009/10/08/scientists-search-for-ways-to
This stuff scares the shit out of me; I can't think of many things worse than permanently altering your capacity to control your own brain. So how soon until they are kicking doors down and vaccinating drug users?
An anti-drug vaccine differs fundamentally from vaccines designed to protect individuals from diseases like measles, the example a committee member raised to the Independent's reporter. Measles is a disease that no one, or virtually no one, wants to catch. It is communicable and could therefore spread to large numbers of people if unchecked. Perhaps measles vaccinations should not be compulsory, if we believe in freedom of choice. But the wisdom of such vaccinations is clear, and it's legitimate for society to encourage and make them widely available.
An anti-drug vaccine, on the other hand, is designed to produce a permanent chemical alteration to an individual's brain chemistry to disable one's ability to experience certain mind states that humans are designed to be able to experience – and which despite their downsides many people desire to experience. Though heroin and cocaine are illegal, that may not always be the case, and nicotine is legal. Legal or not, it is the individual's human right to seek such experiences. But even if one disagrees with that last statement, to alter a human being's brain and body to make the experience impossible, forever, is an extremist approach.
Another more recent article; http://reason.com/blog/2009/10/08/scientists-search-for-ways-to
This stuff scares the shit out of me; I can't think of many things worse than permanently altering your capacity to control your own brain. So how soon until they are kicking doors down and vaccinating drug users?
Comments
I dunno, I can see them implimenting it against criminals and possibly allowing parents the option to use it pre-emptivly on children. Hopefully it will never happen, but I don't have that much faith that if the technology exists, some asshole won't use it.