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I am reading a lot of reporting now about "fentanyl vaccine". I am not sure what's going on there, can anybody explain it to me? Specific questions:
I understand that vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize certain proteins associated with pathogens and have other immune cells to bind to them and destroy them (not quite sure how but maybe not important). But fentanyl is a relatively basic compound, wouldn't training immune system to grab on something this simple also have a danger for it to react on many other simple compounds and disrupt the normal function of the body chemistry? What happens to fentanyl once the immune system recognizes it - is it broken into basic hydrocarbons? Somehow captured and expelled? How does that work exactly?
I assume it is supposed to somehow fight fentanyl addiction. However, assuming it's effective all it would do is make the addict not to be able to get high from fentanyl. They however still will stay addicted, both physiologically and physiologically, not? Wouldn't they immediately seek to get high on some other drug, of which there are dozens? Wouldn't they still suffer withdrawal since their body still craves fentanyl but now is not getting any effect from it - wouldn't that make them take higher and higher dose? Also, would any drug addict voluntarily undergo treatment that would leave them as addicted as before but without any ability to get a fix? How is it supposed to work to solve the problem?
The latter matters a lot to harm reduction proponents. To their perspective, the problem is not that people get addicted, but that addicts often die, as the drug has a thin range of of recreational use before health risks kick in, and because it is often used as a filler/replacement for other more conventional opioids. These harm reduction proponents probably assume (hope) that users will substitute other drugs, at least some of the time.
(Charitably, they’d would provide this as an option to general opioid users to protect them from developing an addiction to fet or an acute case of death if encountering adulterated drugs. Less charitably, a three dose regimen is the sort of thing that could be judicially ordered, or even put in the kits with Narcan. Though the latter has enough legal risk cynics don’t have too much to worry about.
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