Vaccinating Against Crack and Smoking
Slashdot recently covered the development of a vaccine for crack and nicotine.
Geeks have transhumanist tendencies so this kind of thing is interesting, and seems like any other vaccine to me, given the disease profile of smoking and crack.
Is it the states place to vaccinate its population against disease? I think so, and doing so nearly eradicated smallpox and tuberculosis here in the UK, though I know that there is libertarian dissent on the issue.
Parents vaccinating their young children before they turn into crackheads is interesting, and although you have to be an adult age to do lots of things, your parents can have you do things otherwise unavailable before you are of age.
For existing crackheads, I think their addiction could still be sustained from the negative reinforcement of cold turkey rather than the positive reinforcement of getting high, and also the positive reinforcement of social signaling (bigger in smoking than crack, I must admit) is a large factor.
Since economic pressure would force the issue for most addicts, this wouldn’t be a major problem, but we can expect trust fund brats holding out because its cool and they can afford it when these are included in the state’s “BCG” jab.
The Vaccinating Against Crack and Smoking by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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5 Responses to “Vaccinating Against Crack and Smoking”
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Being a cocaine user is not a disease. Having an addiction is not a disease. A disease might stem from cocaine or tabacco abuse.
Parents could do all sorts to stop their kids from having habits that lead to a disease. Should we genetically modify our children not to have the sweet detecting part of our tongue to prevent sugar-related disease? I would argue the negative impact of sugar affect more of us and therefore has a more damaging affect on our society.
I suppose one strong argument in favour of vaccinating against all drugs is it would almost demolish crime which is a huge cost to the state. However if we modified against obesity, imagine how much money the state would benefit from increased productivity in the work place?
However we do not, and hopefully never shall, belong to the state and if we did we would all be eugenically designed to be as economically productive as possible, and the consequences of that I can not bear to think about.
Parents and state both have the same job imo, to raise us in environments that are safe from immediate danger and to teach us to care for ourselves. This is neither.
If there are no side effects, and parents do do all sorts to stop their kids from having habits that lead to a disease, then the vaccine has no effect but is a precautionary backup in case those other methods fail.
Youre example of sugar is an exaggeration. I believe that sugar related disease (gum disease and diabetes, right?) is mitigated by brushing our teeth and not eating morbid amounts of sugar; sugar is also not very addiction- or dependence-forming: There are no health warnings on packaging of sugary products in any country.
Vaccinating against strongly addictive and harmful drugs like nicotine and cocaine is very different (and soon a reality) compared to a vaccine for obesity, the cause of which is not strongly addictive.
Belonging to the state does not automatically being eugenically designed, but belonging to the state is also an exaggeration. We have BCG vaccine but we do not belong to the state.
Parents and states are duty bound not only to protect us from immediate danger, but also potential dangers, and from doing things that harm others but not ourselves.
and the person’s freedom of choice and autonomy kick in?
and obesity. Over 1/5 of women in the UK and 1/4+ in the US. I would argue that sugar is highly addictive considering we are genetically programmed to desire sugar (as is the idea of the Thrifty Phenotype). This is the reason kids crave icecream and jelly, and if they can’t get it smoother their chips in ketchup which is sugar rich. Sugar gives kids a hit which makes them sky high and of course they want more - I consider that addiction.
If sugar and fat is not addictive then why are people still fat? If they could just say, “No thank you” to that chocolate brownie I believe a lot of people would.
I think if we did belong to the state and they could do anything they wanted with us Eugenics would be the first thing they would do.
The reason I mentioned belonging to the state was because in your original post you said you thought it was the state’s place to vaccinate against disease. Cocaine is however a disease of ‘choice’ and the government has no right to control what we are allowed to choose.
Welcome Big Brother, you will like England very much.
I’d say it’s reasonable for the state to vaccinate against infectious diseases, because there is a collectivised aspect to them which extends from the inherent collectivisation of the air we breathe; if one person gets smallpox, then others probably will too, whether they choose to or not. If you consider a virus to be an attack on your biological security, then vaccination might even fall under the state’s duty to provide security for its citizens, which most libertarians support.
People generally like being vaccinated against nasty bugs, but there are a few paranoid or religious holdouts who might refuse the injection. To force it upon them would be heavy-handed, so to balance their freedom to be unvaccinated, everyone else must have the freedom not to come anywhere near them. I don’t see a problem with, say, schools having a “no unvaccinated pupils here” policy. If you apply info-security principles to bio-security issues, it’s no different to admins banning unpatched Windows boxes from their networks. The weirdo holdouts remain free to run Windows - they just have to do it in their basements where nobody gets hurt :)
(I also like the idea of a an anti-vaccine cult arising and printing “My Children Are Not Remote Root Exploits!” bumper stickers to protest their exclusion from healthy society :) )
James,
Herd immunity means that we do not have to confine people to basements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
xjenx