mortiz095

As expected, recent figures release by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) show a dismal 17.4% success rate for scientists applying for research funding. NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, and has two institutes devoted to addiction: The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA.) It's only through NIH supported research that progress is made on understanding addiction and improving treatment outcomes. Yes, we need more access to treatment but we also need better treatments, and that can only come through scientific research. Anyone who care about addiction and its treatment needs to contact their representatives and let them know we support and need research on addiction. Advocacy matters! Why do you think research funding for breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, and autism has gone up so much! Advocacy! Please support research and urge others to as well. MW NIH Grants Funding Drops; The suc...

I had a conversation this past week with another professional who is offering alternatives to 12-step rehab. I had examined his website and had some concerns I wanted to discuss with him. The most important was that on his site, he made claims that I didn't think were scientifically supportable. He claimed, for example, that his program yielded a 70% response (read: cure) rate. So we had a talk. It wasn't easy. I expressed my concern that those of us offering alternatives would be best served by sticking as close as possible to scientifically supportable claims or assertions. I also said that I was concerned that if we acted like current providers in making unsupportable claims that we would hurt our cause. He said that his program is extremely selective in who they take. They accept only "highly motivated" individuals who apparently have little in the way of significant coexisting problems. Among this group, he claimed a 70% rate of success "as the client define...

The New York Times today published a story about research on vaccines to prevent or treat substance addictions. The tantalizing title: "An Addiction Vaccine, Tantalizingly Close." The problem? It's not only not close, it's looking more and more unlikely as time goes on. The article details the research career of Kim Janda, an immunologist at the Scripps Institute. Unfortunately, his dedicated quest to develop an effective vaccine for nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine or even obesity have all been dead ends. Often, research in rodents is tantalizing but then human studies are inevitably disappointing. Yet, he is said to be at the "vanguard of addiction research." No less a luminary than the inevitably quoted Drug War General and Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Nora Volkow naturally endorses this research, which they funded. Ummmhhh. What am I missing here? I wish that this research offered more promise than it appears ...

Recently there have been some breathless reports about an experiment conducted by Mark Hutchinson, a scientist at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Hutchinson targeted a novel receptor, TLR4, that is involved in modulating the immune system. It is possible that this receptor is involved in some of the symptoms of drunkenness, like imbalance and slurred speech. Hutchinson gave alcohol to mice who were either normal mice ("wild type") or who had been genetically modified to lack genes encoding two different receptors involved in the TLR4 cascade. They also used a medication that blocked opioid receptors, naltrexone as a comparison group. In addition, they conducted some studies on cell cultures rather than live animals. One of the findings was that mice without these genes had shorter durations of imbalance on two difference measures when given alcohol, compared to mice who were genetically normal. This is what led to the media hype. So does this mean that we are close to...