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Medicine

Fentanyl Vaccine Developed By Researchers Could Eliminate Drug's 'High' 154

Researchers have developed a fentanyl vaccine that could eliminate the drug's "high" by blocking its ability to enter the brain -- which could be a major step forward in the ongoing opioid crisis. Yahoo News reports: The study, conducted by a research team led by the University of Houston and funded by the Department of Defense through the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Disorder Research Program, was published in the journal Pharmaceutics at the end of October. Colin Haile, a research associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study, said in a news release that the vaccine "is able to generate anti-fentanyl antibodies that bind to the consumed fentanyl and prevent it from entering the brain, allowing it to be eliminated out of the body via the kidneys. "Thus, the individual will not feel the euphoric effects and can "get back on the wagon' to sobriety."

Haile added that the anti-fentanyl antibodies didn't cross-react with other opioids, meaning a vaccinated person could still be treated for pain relief with other opioids. The vaccine did not cause any adverse side effects in rats involved in lab studies, and clinical trials in humans are planned "soon," with manufacturing of clinical-grade vaccine to begin in the coming months.
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Fentanyl Vaccine Developed By Researchers Could Eliminate Drug's 'High'

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  • It is good news that progress in pharmacology may save lives. Nevertheless, is vaccine really an appropriate term, or is it more a marketing banner?
    • by Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @09:14PM (#63057110) Journal
      "is able to generate anti-fentanyl antibodies" so yes it qualifies as a vaccine.
      • by Bob_Who ( 926234 )

        "is able to generate anti-fentanyl antibodies" so yes it qualifies as a vaccine.

        So we should all get vaccinated from this pathogen that indiscriminately infects all humans? Many substances create an immune response.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Nevertheless, is vaccine really an appropriate term, or is it more a marketing banner?

      Probably not, but I am terrified that it might be.

      People addicted to opioids in short order are not taking them to get high, they don't feel a high.
      They take opioids to stop the agonies of withdraw symptons.

      "Vaccinating" an addict by removing the high isn't going to be any motivation to stop taking them.
      It will simply prevent them from temporarily relieving withdraw symptoms, forcing them to go through it.

      The only people this would work on are those not yet addicted.
      That would prevent the high, and there wo

  • *facepalms* Fentanyl is used, in a clinical setting, when other opiates / opiods *aren't* strong enough.

    When I had a catheter shoved up my urethra, through my bladder, and into one of my ureters, to enlarge it, so that, in a week's time, they could laze a giant kidney stone in one of my kidneys, you bet your ass they kept me topped up on fentanyl. It is pain second only to being crucified.

    And now some idiot has developed a vaccine for next-level pain relief? So, if an opiate / opiod addict gets hit by a car

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by JBeretta ( 7487512 )

      *facepalms* Fentanyl is used, in a clinical setting, when other opiates / opiods *aren't* strong enough.

      They may as well as have announced that they came up with a vaccine for vancomycin, for similar reasons. Useless, dumb, a waste of time, effort, and money. And that's being generous.

      Are you on drugs right now? What the absolute fuck does your rant have to do with anything in reality? Are you under the assumption that they're getting ready to start offering the Fentanyl vaccine to the general public for some bizarre fucking reason??

      This is to HELP ADDICTS. They get a shot, Fentanyl stops getting them high, and they can be weaned off of it easier since there's no euphoria associated with the drug for THAT PERSON.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Leaving them, still jonesing and "needing" a massive dose of heroin to make it go away.

        It's like a no pie diet, but all the chocolate cake you can eat.

        • I wonder if it blocks heroin? Asking for my mate, the trumpet player.
          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            According to the summary, it does not.

            Haile added that the anti-fentanyl antibodies didn't cross-react with other opioids, meaning a vaccinated person could still be treated for pain relief with other opioids.

            • Good news!
              • by sjames ( 1099 )

                It also means the vaccine will not end opiate addiction, it'll just make the addict more desperate for heroin.

                Administration of the vaccine would constitute malpractice just as surely as giving mercury salts for digestive discomfort.

                • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                  Well, it would just join the list of Opiod cures that went wrong. Like Heroin, which was developed as a cure for addiction to Opium.

                  • by sjames ( 1099 )

                    But unlike heroin, you could never quit it even if you summon superhuman effort.

                    • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                      But unlike heroin, you could never quit it even if you summon superhuman effort.

                      Sure you could. Off the top of my head: immunosuppressants and injecting directly into your brain. Then there's simply the possibility of reformulated fentanyl that does not trigger the response. Consider the "bath salts" sold at one point in many "smoking accessory" stores. What they actually were is synthetic cannabinoids that were not officially banned drugs. The DEA could ban them, but they just changed the formulation and they had a moving target. The same could happen with fentanyl. Different "flavors

                    • by sjames ( 1099 )

                      When you get to immunosuppressants, injecting directly into the brain, etc you're well out there. BTW, an autologous marrow transplant might do it as well. But let's face it, that's all pretty extreme for a single injection that should never have happened and all have a non-zero fatality.

                      The designer fentanyl won't have FDA approval and so won't be useful for legitimate medical need.

                    • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                      By the way, since fentanyl refers to a certain compound, these "reformated" fentanyls you posit won't consist of "fentanyl" if you see where I'm going with this. It's the wrong term.

                      Fair enough. I was not sure of precisely the right term. "alternate synthetic opioids", "fentanyloids", etc. "fentalogues" seems to work well enough.

                    • by sjames ( 1099 )

                      useful in the sense that if a doctor, in his best judgement, thinks the patient needs a strong painkiller, he can prescribe it and his patient can pick it up at the pharmacy.

                      You will find no pharmacy in the U.S. dispensing unapproved designer drugs. I doubt it happens in the UK either.

                      If your point is that the U.S. FDA and DEA are full of crap, you could make that point without being needlessly snarky and insulting and I would readily agree. But since we are apparently being snarky and insulting now:

                      My repl

        • I didn't read the article and probably would not understand it even if I did. But I think you are correct. The addict will likely just increase the dosage of fentynl until it "works". The study used rats, and the rat could not seek out more drug for the high. Humans can. My dog had spinal surgery a few years ago and I was never worried about him getting hooked. I followed the vet instructions to the letter to minimize the withdrawal. But I'd be surprised if he did not have some and would have gotten more p
    • Wow. Just, wow. Holy crap. Yeah, this is clearly awful. Soooo much better for an addict to take street opiates with an unknown amount of fentanyl, OD while hiding in a patch of trees somewhere in a park, stop breathing and turn into a corpse. I mean, that’s clearly a small price to pay because maybe, just maybe, someone might need strong pain relief in the next few months.
      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Do you really think the addict won't just replace fentanyl with heroin?

        If they could give up the high, they wouldn't need the vaccine at all.

        • It would be great if heroin came back, we we have a LOT less overdoses.

        • by piojo ( 995934 )

          I've read fentanyl is a shitty replacement for heroin, anyway. It doesn't feel as good, plus it kills you.

          If all opiate addicts got vaccinated for fentanyl and derivatives, the market would disappear and it would be replaced by good old fashioned heroin. Of course fentanyl is one of the most effective painkillers in a clinical setting, so this is not an idea without cost.

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            Or we could stop the pointless war on some drugs so there wouldn't be incentives to use fentanyl whose primary benefit on the street is that a tiny amount smuggled or diverted goes a long way.

            • I'm completely in favor of drug legalization, but fentanyl is particularly effective at stopping your lungs, AFTER it knocks you unconscious. The other opiates are far less deadly.
              • by sjames ( 1099 )

                Right, and if it wasn't so hard to get safer drugs, fentanyl wouldn't be so commonly used.

    • by demonlapin ( 527802 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @11:07PM (#63057262) Homepage Journal
      > Fentanyl is used, in a clinical setting, when other opiates / opiods *aren't* strong enough.

      Clinically, it's used because it's fairly short-acting and kicks in almost instantly, characteristics that make it excellent for drug dealers (fun fact: heroin is metabolized in the brain to morphine, but crosses into the brain faster - so the high hits harder). It unfortunately also has a strong propensity to stop breathing way out of proportion to the degree of pain relief. Not a problem under anesthesia, because we're breathing for you during most surgeries, but not very useful generically in the hospital and responsible for a lot of fentanyl deaths. I'm an anesthesiologist and very rarely use it. I prefer longer-acting drugs that will actually keep the patient comfortable for more than an hour. It depends heavily on whether the surgery is painful only when it's happening, or is also painful afterward. It's often part of what's given during a nurse-administered sedation, because it wears off quickly and they don't have to involve an anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist (CRNA).
    • How nice of you to be so accurate with your comment subject.
    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      And dumber still, since it won't cross react with other opioids, the addict, who will still be addicted, will just resort to injecting truly heroic doses of heroin with truly heroic amounts of contaminants chasing the high.

      Or as you say, they'll try carfentanyl and probably die from an overdose.

      If anyone comes at me with that vaccine, it's going up their ass sideways.

    • *facepalms* Fentanyl is used, in a clinical setting, when other opiates / opiods *aren't* strong enough.

      When I had a catheter shoved up my urethra, through my bladder, and into one of my ureters, to enlarge it, so that, in a week's time, they could laze a giant kidney stone in one of my kidneys, you bet your ass they kept me topped up on fentanyl. It is pain second only to being crucified.

      And now some idiot has developed a vaccine for next-level pain relief? So, if an opiate / opiod addict gets hit by a car, the hospital has to make a choice between ludicrous amounts of less effective opiates / opiods, or trying to dose the victim with something like carfentanil?

      Well if an addict gets hit by a car the hospital already has its work cut out for it trying to figure out a proper dose to overcome their tolerance. Now IANAA (I am not an anesthesiologist) but checking the medical record and figuring out they need to use a different highly potent opiod painkiller probably isn't that big an issue.

      Contrast that to the reason that these addicts might want a fentanyl vaccine. Because fentanyl is so potent it's a lot easier to smuggle, making it much cheaper to achieve the same

    • I was given Fentanyl during an operation. It didn't seem to do very much and I did not feel "high" at all.

      • by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        I've also been given an opioid for pain and I didn't think it did anything much to make the pain disappear. It sure made me not care about the pain, though.

        • by piojo ( 995934 )

          I've also been given an opioid for pain and I didn't think it did anything much to make the pain disappear. It sure made me not care about the pain, though.

          That is super compelling. It's like nirvana in a needle. That's what being in an awakened state is--it's not that life's pain goes away. It's that one has some distance from it (loses some association with that pain being "me"), and an abnormally peaceful state results. It's similar to the way I've read xanax makes people feel okay, like they belong and are okay. Awakening can be like this except without any pervasive sense of euphoria. It's too bad nobody has figured out how to induce awakening easily, as

      • by NewID_of_Ami.One ( 9578152 ) on Thursday November 17, 2022 @06:49AM (#63057678)

        Probably your dosage was much lower than required. Because I was given some cocktail that included fentanyl & morphine and got high AF. AF. AAAFFFFF.

        First thought on come back to consciousness after some 10-11 hour surgery*: "Oh God why am i so happy" then "Why didnt i get this done much earlier" & how the F can there be so much happiness in the world that i could cry.

        Then for some reason i got curious & paranoid about the frequent mobile x-ray unit (to check the sternum isn't falling apart or misaligned due to movement) is them trying to find some stuff they lost inside me. Was just curious what equipment it was. Couldn't ask as i was intubated and on the ventilator type thing.

        Anyway, finally, i settled down to watch the big TV right next to my bed in the ICU.
        After watching that TV for like 4-5 hours i think I decided to change channels and demanded the TV remote from the Nurse/Resident.

        Turns out it was not a TV but the monitor showing my vitals & readings from some sensors they had left inside (they pull them out after a day) I clearly remember watching 1-2 seasons of some great program

        Nurse brought 3 types of meals for me to choose one (since patients dont want to eat at that stage of postop)
        I ate all 3 while watching TV again.

        Threw a tantrum when nurse informed they're gonna remove the ventilator now and i have to breath on my own now!
        It's very difficult & boring to remember to breath. You keep forgetting and panicking.

        Managed to pinpoint one tired resident at 2-3am whom i could convince to unlock my morphine and/or fentany dispenser code and increase it a few clicks - since it was a once (or twice) in a lifetime opportunity he finally agreed.

        He only had half the code but told me to complain 3-4 times of pain to the nurses and then he will talk to them & get their half code and increase the dose a bit.
        Guy overdid it probably because i didn't like that high, it was suddenly weird and feeling knocked out for 10min. Then it was all good and i went back to watching TV till 8am.

        So at the right dose fentanyl & morphine were freaking good.

        *actual surgery would've been just 3-4 hours - rest is just waiting around with your chest cavity open and your team of residents, jr surgeons, nurses milling around trying to keep you just barely alive and prepping various stuff and making a racket sawing off your sternum & putting retractors with the same finesse of changing tires - till respective senior surgeons on the assembly line get to you and do the various cardiac artery bypass grafts / lima rima / stuff in like 5-6 places (since engine bay is open they prefer to do even the ones which would have problems in the future)

        How do i know this? Coz i sorta woke up a bit for few seconds when someone was trying to remove the intubation tube (to replace it due to some issue) and unconscious me decided to put my foot down and not let anyone take anything from me without a fight. One of my teeth broke in that fight bcoz it seems it was critical to take the tube out asap so they had to use some metal thing to open my mouth.

        Fortunately, a key part of anesthesia cocktail, not publicized much due to obvious reasons, includes some agents that will stop the process of saving memories of stuff happening in the last few seconds/minutes ie Anterograde amnesia.
        So basically while you were going through a shitload of pain you won't remember the pain of even a few seconds/minutes back so after its over you no longer remember you had any pain, though you can make out something is/was weird but you feel that was just you being high or out of it.

        Ironically, the entire surgery including few days before n after etc was freaking unbelievably painless and smooth while getting that tooth fixed back took me like 10-15 visits to the dentist and multiple re-do stuff and its still not perfect

        ** IANAD, though but most of my family are, all types. So this is all from a Patient's PoV, not accurate in a medical sense for cabg surgery.

        • Can't believe no one hasn't modded this up. A true experience as told by a patient. Thanks for posting, never been under, now i know what I have to look forward to. Doesn't sound great.
        • Fortunately, a key part of anesthesia cocktail, not publicized much due to obvious reasons, includes some agents that will stop the process of saving memories of stuff happening in the last few seconds/minutes ie Anterograde amnesia.
          So basically while you were going through a shitload of pain you won't remember the pain of even a few seconds/minutes back so after its over you no longer remember you had any pain, though you can make out something is/was weird but you feel that was just you being high or out of it.

          They performed the same procedure on me twice. The second time they were late in pushing the cocktail, which included a benzodiazepine, so I have a lot more memories of it, including the pain. I was conscious for the operation both times.

    • You're insane.

    • Did you notice the use case for this, or just head on down to the comments and start banging on your keyboard? Note:

      "Thus, the individual will not feel the euphoric effects and can "get back on the wagon' to sobriety."

      They aren't handing it out with the MMR to children, it's for use in recovery from addiction. The small risk that the patient may end up in a situation where they need top-shelf painkillers is weighed against weaning them off of something that is *definitely* killing them.

    • And now some idiot has developed a vaccine for next-level pain relief?

      About 70,000 people died from fentanyl overdoses last year [cnn.com]. And that is increasing.

      So yes, some idiot was thinking being alive might be a higher health priority than having super awesome pain killers.

      So, if an opiate / opiod addict gets hit by a car, the hospital has to make a choice between ludicrous amounts of less effective opiates / opiods, or trying to dose the victim with something like carfentanil? WTF is wrong with these people?

      An addict specifically is at extremely high risk of dying from an overdose, more so than having a random accident requiring strong pain killers. So yes, this would probably be a worthwhile tradeoff for them.

      The good news is that, unless you personally are in the habit of using cocaine or other illicit drugs wi

  • People dying of fentanyl for the most part don't know they are taking fentanyl. They bought a counterfeit Xanax or Ecstasy, and it's laced with fentanyl.

    If this can be done for fentanyl, can it be done for nicotine and alcohol and sugar?

    • The news articles I've seen don't target those chemicals, but that it's mostly Heroin being laced with the stuff to "spread it out" due to increased demand due to the government actually becoming effective at shutting down the pill mills so the addicts can't get Oxycodone and such anymore.

      While I'll agree that pill mills are a problem, we literally killed thousands of addicts because we didn't realize that opioid addiction is so extreme that addicts, denied a safe(ish) drug, will go for a much less safe one

      • by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Thursday November 17, 2022 @06:29AM (#63057660)
        Bullshit. We absolutely realized this. Every addiction specialist and pain medicine expert was screaming this at the CDC while they were "considering" their guidelines. The AMA opposed it on these grounds too. It was the overwhelming expert consensus they were about to kill huge numbers of addicts. They did it anyway. It wasn't medical experts who came up with those guidelines, it was the DEA, the CDC simply laundered it for them. American drug policy has long been about making addiction as deadly as possible due to sadomoralists being more interested in punishment than help, and this was no exception. Our government *chose* to kill hundreds of thousands of addicts.
        The CDC also claims it's 90MME guidance wasn't meant to be interpreted as a hard cap and it wasn't recommending patient abandonment. Every expert called bullshit on that too.

        This has been yet another exercise in our drug policy of "harm maximization". Trying to pile the bodies up as high as possible to tell people "see, bad people who take drugs die."
        • by tragedy ( 27079 )

          This seems to have been US policy for a long time. Consider the alcohol poisoning program the US started back during prohibition. They wanted to stop bootleggers from selling industrial alcohol for drinking purposes so they found ways to adulterate it. The bootleggers would distill it, so they government kept developing more difficult to remove (and more deadly) additives. Thousands or even tens of thousands probably died as a result. To this day, you can buy rubbing alcohol in pharmacies and it's ok to buy

    • Contaminated with fentanyl, not laced. "Lacing" implies something intentional, and while that may be the case on occasion, it's believed that it's a problem of fentanyl and other drugs being handled on the same surfaces, and fentanyl's lethal dose is incredibly low.

      As for nicotine, alcohol, and sugar, maybe for the first two, but if you did it on the second, you'd kill the host as they wouldn't have enough energy sources left, and the body would eat itself trying to find some.

    • They're already working on it for nicotine:
      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]

      Nicotine vaccines are a new class of immunotherapeutics under development. It is believed that anti-nicotine antibodies arising from vaccination capture nicotine and prevent or reduce its entry into the brain, as the antibody-bound nicotine is too large to cross the blood-brain barrier. This in turn decreases the pleasurable effects of smoking, reducing or eliminating positive reinforcement, thereby making it easier for a smoker to quit smoking.

      From what I'm reading, ethanol probably isn't considered a good candidate for this.

      Sugar would VERY much not be a good candidate for this. Glucose is primarily what the brain runs on!

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Careful, nicotine is one of the only drugs that can treat the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. That's why so many mental patients smoke.

        • Beneficial effects of nicotine and cigarette smoking:

          Mental functioning
          Research conducted among smokers has shown that cigarette smoking (or nicotine administration) has several benefits, including modest improvements in vigilance and information processing, facilitation of some motor responses, and perhaps enhancement of memory.
          Nonetheless, there are certainly data suggesting benefits of nicotine in non-smokers with regard to performance and information processing. Consistent with these findings, experimen

      • My experience with smoking (28 years I quit in 2016) is that I was/am way more addicted to the act of smoking than the nicotine itself.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Aighearach ( 97333 )

      People dying of fentanyl for the most part don't know they are taking fentanyl. They bought a counterfeit Xanax or Ecstasy, and it's laced with fentanyl.

      Those are the cases most likely to make your news feed, but a huge portion of overdoses are people trying to quit, who relapse. Traditionally, this happened because their tolerance had gone down, and they didn't account for that in their dosing. But now, their tolerance has gone down, and also the drug is stronger, so they OD really bad and die. Most of them are probably aware at this point that most of their drugs are partly fentanyl.

      This has the potential to help a lot of people are trying to escape their

      • by jabuzz ( 182671 )

        There are nicotine vaccines in development. Such a vaccine would save a *lot* of lives.

  • So you could develop fentanyl that makes you feel like riding a rainbow colored unicorn but it will not make a difference for the opiod crisis.

  • so the fent addict with his craving will take heroin or whatever

    • One conclusion I've come to in my admittedly limited research on the topic is that I don't think there are actually Fentanyl, Oxy, or Heroin addicts. I think what you have is an overarching class of Opioid addicts, who will take whatever opioid they can get their hands on to satisfy the addiction, no matter its form.

      If given a choice, they will go with the safest, cheapest, easiest forms first, of course. So once they have a dealer, they'll stick with that form - for example, Oxy pills. If denied that fo

      • by thomn8r ( 635504 )

        One conclusion I've come to in my admittedly limited research on the topic is that I don't think there are actually Fentanyl, Oxy, or Heroin addicts. I think what you have is an overarching class of Opioid addicts, who will take whatever opioid they can get their hands on to satisfy the addiction, no matter its form.

        Exactly this. In much the same way an alcoholic will drink mouthwash, hand sanitizer, or even Stella Rosa, if good booze isn't available.

    • so the fent addict with his craving will take heroin or whatever

      This is a major advantage. It's better that addicts move to heroin rather than Fentanyl, because it is apparently less deadly than fentanyl, harder to smuggle, and not (yet) mass produced in labs.

  • An epidemic of pain (Score:1, Interesting)

    by MacMann ( 7518492 )

    The CDC issued guidance on prescribing opioids that health care providers took as some kind of law. The guidance was to take care when prescribing opioids above certain levels, not to prohibit exceeding these levels. So, with people not getting their pain treated by properly metered and prescribed medications people turned to street drugs for self medicating. This meant drugs that were not carefully measured out, and not always truthfully told what was inside. So people would overdose.

    With the new guida

    • The new guidelines don't really help matters. In fact they might make it worse. Doctors aren't scared of the CDC, they're scared of the DEA. The DEA is likely to read the new guidelines as "50MME is the new standard". Yes, it's pretty wilful misinterpretation, but that's what they do. They already have a long history of going after perfectly responsible doctors.

      The CDC's new guidance still has the same fatal flaw of not differentiating temporary mild to moderate pain for long term moderate to severe pain
  • My very limited experience with addicts is if one opiate is blocked another one will be used. Addiction can be very hard to beat.
  • Like, if people are overdosing on the stuff, doesn't that generally mean they were seeking more of the high than they could reach before the drug caused other harm? So if you want to help people avoid overdosing, wouldn't it be a better solution to synergistically affect the high? The line of thought being then they wouldn't have to take so much that it damages their kidney/livers/hearts/etc.? Basically put more distance between effective dose and lethal dose?

    Afterall, when people become acclimated to al

  • China continues to push fentanyl on the west, esp. America.
    If this works, it will deprive China of a LOT OF $.
  • by rally2xs ( 1093023 ) on Thursday November 17, 2022 @05:19AM (#63057576)

    It seems to be a good thing, since the power of the drug can be deadly for those that haven't built up a tolerance to opiodis. People get a headache or some other pain, a "friend" gives them what they call a percocet, but in actuality is a fentanyl tablet that will kill them same-day. For such people, it might be good to get such a "vaccine" to keep the unknowing ingestion from seemingly innocent sources from killing them. With opiod deaths in the country rivaling the depredations of World War 2, anything at all that will help is probably a good idea.

  • What drug users will take this vaccine ahead of time ???? Non drug users will not need it.
  • by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Thursday November 17, 2022 @06:21AM (#63057654)
    If it doesn't cross react, that also will make it's usefulness very limited for the opioid crisis. Since China cracked down on fentanyl itself, street drugs have long since moved into the analog game. You don't even find much regular fentanyl anymore, you get random analogs that you don't know proper dosing even if it was pure. Or if it does cross react with fent analog opioids (but not others), you're extra fucked in the hospital, because remifenantil and sufentanil won't be possible for surgery.
  • by sloth jr ( 88200 ) on Thursday November 17, 2022 @07:49AM (#63057728)
    Legitimate uses for Fentanyl in a surgical setting (eg, light sedation for implantation or removal of infusion port, colonoscopy). Unless there's another "pill [that] makes you small", I'm out.
  • by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Thursday November 17, 2022 @10:46AM (#63058138) Homepage
    I've had Fentanyl twice in the last 2 years for a lung collapse and/or plurodisis. Part of the problem with Fentanyl is: it's quiet a narrow-spectrum intoxication that the user doesn't feel high until they have dangerous levels of the drug in their system. In other words, its a really clean high--too clean.

    Part of the solution: Fentanyl test kits. Firstly, they would detect Fentanyl hidden in other safer drugs, such as MDMA. Secondly, they may indicate a fatal dose. If the little skull and crossbones is showing on the stick, don't take it.
  • What kind of dystopian hell hole are they preparing for if they think anyone except some junkies trying to avoid prison time would let them be injected with this?

    With a gun to your head I guess, but otherwise I can't see anyone subjecting themselves or their kids to it.

  • Narcan (Naloxone) is available as an inhaler. It's easier to administrate by non professionals.

    I'm hoping that they can reduce the cost and step up production to the point where we can administer this stuff using aerial spraying over homeless camps.

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