Alcoholism Vaccine Makes Alcohol Intolerable To Drinkers 350
Hugh Pickens writes "Ariel Schwartz reports that researchers are working on an alcoholism vaccine that makes alcohol intolerable to anyone who drinks it. The vaccine builds on what happens naturally in certain people — about 20% of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean population — with an alcohol intolerance mutation. Normally, the liver breaks down alcohol into an enzyme that's transformed into the compound acetaldehyde (responsible for that nasty hangover feeling), which in turn is degraded into another enzyme. The acetaldehyde doesn't usually have time to build up before it's broken down. But people with the alcohol intolerance mutation lack the ability to produce that second enzyme; acetaldehyde accumulates, and they feel terrible. Dr. Juan Asenjo and his colleagues have come up with a way to stop the synthesis of that second enzyme via a vaccine, mimicking the mutation that sometimes happens naturally. 'People have this mutation all over the world. It's like how some people can't drink milk,' says Asenjo. Addressing the physiological part of alcohol addiction is just one piece of the battle. Addictive tendencies could very well manifest in other ways; instead of alcohol, perhaps former addicts will move on to cigarettes. Asenjo admits as much: 'Addiction is a psychological disease, a social disease. Obviously this is only the biological part of it.'"
I'll take a shot... (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, no alcohol? Shot as in vaccine? Fuck that.
The only people who will be opposed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'll take a shot... (Score:5, Funny)
I drank plenty of water and fluids (both before and fact the fact)
Last night too, I see.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
You could, you're just too cheap.
Re:Doubtful (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'll take a shot... (Score:4, Funny)
Also, fusel oils (very common in brown spirits like whiskey and far more rare in clear spirits like vodka) can make hangovers worse.
The very worse hangover I ever had was when I decided to take a sculpture class in college. One of the advantages was learning to weld, and I discovered that if you had a bad hangover and took a cutting torch, turned on the oxygen and breathed deeply the hangover was gone in less than five minutes.
Well, one morning I was so hung over I was still staggering. I went to do my hangover remedy... and you guessed it, I turned the wrong knob. That gave me the mother of all hangovers! The oxygen helped a little after I stopped puking. I felt better after the instructor smoked a joint with me (this was back in the 70s, also known as the "stone" age).
The best hangover remedy won't work any more unless you raise your own chickens, and that's eggnog. Three raw egg yolks in a glass, mixed with milk and a generous amount of sugar and perhaps nutmeg. The yolk of a raw egg contains an enzyme that speeds the breakdown (and come to think of it, might just be an antidote to the vaccine as well). The trouble is that heat, including pasteurization, kills the enzyme. So grocery store eggnog won't work, you need raw yolks, and one of three raw commercial eggs has salmonella. Yeah, no hangover this morning but tomorrow you'll feel worse from the cramps and runs and maybe even be in the hospital.
If you're raising chickens it works well.