In October I discussed a study that found a cocaine "vaccine,"
which is aimed at neutralizing the drug's psychoactivity, was
mostly ineffective at getting users to cut back on their
consumption. On Tuesday The Washington Post ran a weirdly late
story about the same study in which the lead author offers a
decidedly more negative spin than he did last fall: The vaccine,
called TA-CD, shows promise but could also be dangerous; some of
the addicts participating in a study of the vaccine started
doing massive amounts of cocaine in hopes of overcoming its
effects, according to Thomas R. Kosten, the lead researcher on
the study, which was published in the Archives of General
Psychiatry in October. "After the vaccine, doing cocaine was a
very disappointing experience for them," said Kosten, a
professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Baylor College of
Medicine in Houston. Nobody overdosed, but some of them had 10
times more cocaine coursing through their systems than
researchers had encountered before, according to