New smoking vaccine developed

Smokers who can't kick the habit could someday find the answer in an antismoking vaccine.

The vaccine has been developed by ImmuLogic of Waltham, Mass., which plans to test it on human volunteers soon. The company already has begun testing a cocaine vaccine on volunteers.

It is the first antismoking treatment that has attempted to neutralize the addictive effects of nicotine, and works by provoking the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to and neutralize nicotine. That prevents nicotine from reaching the body's nicotine receptors and reinforcing the craving that hooks smokers.

In other words, you could smoke if you wanted to, but because there would be no "nicotine hit," there would be little point, physiologically, in persisting.

The vaccine could be the forerunner of a new generation of treatments that transform the way drug abuse -- from marijuana to nicotine -- is treated.

The vaccine's development has been welcomed by one of Britain's leading addiction specialists as "a major advance which could save as many lives as the early vaccines against infectious scourges like smallpox."

Dr. Colin Brewer, director of the Stapleford Center, a British clinic that treats patients with drug addictions, said: "Smoking is just like an infectious disease. It spreads from person to person. Nicotine is nearly always the first drug people use, the first drug they get addicted to, and the most addictive of all drugs."

Brewer said there could be an ethical outcry if governments sought to immunize children against tobacco because vaccines can have adverse effects.

-- Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.