Anti-smoking vaccine?

Didi had quit smoking hundreds of times before she moved back home to become her mother’s caregiver, and because her father still smokes she has taken up the habit again and wonders about whether it is as bad for her as the health authorities say it as, and whether an anti-smoking vaccine is going to be any good.

"Novartis has acquired global rights to an anti-smoking vaccine, developed by Swiss company Cytos Biotechnology," says Didi. "This sounds too good to be true and it probably is.”

“The vaccine acts by inducing the body to develop antibodies that bind to nicotine molecules in the bloodstream and make them too large to get through the blood-brain barrier."

"By reducing the uptake of nicotine, the smoker gets no buzz from smoking and theoretically has no reason to smoke any more," says Didi. "But every smoker I know enjoys the smoking experience itself -- you know, blowing smoke circles in the air -- and buzz or no buzz this vaccine may not be the wonder drug to help smokers stop smoking."

"Why is there no anti-alcohol vaccine?" asks Didi. "Silly question, I know, because even if it could be done why would any biotechnologist in his or her right mind develop a vaccine to deprive people from enjoying what they, themselves, enjoy?”

“Alcohol causes more disease, death and misery than any other substance I know but raging against it went out of fashion in the 1930s when my dad was a youth,” says Didi, “and he tells me that it’s all a fad, people need something and someone to hate, and this time around it’s smokers.”

"The anti-smoking industry – including pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines for smoking - is becoming as lucrative as the tobacco industry and this really worries me," sighs Didi. "When two powerful lobbies stand to make squillions of dollars out of smokers whether they continue to smoke or quit, you get to understand what it's all about."

"I fear that they really don't care about smokers, they just want our money."

Read more by Didi on this issue:

mental health self-medicators?

dealing with elderly parents and doctors

War vet victimized for smoking