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9th Jan 2005
Addiction & Anti-Nicotine Vaccines
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Today's guests include Dr Campbell Bunce, from Xenova, who joins us to talk about vaccines to prevent nicotine and cocaine addiction, Cambridge University's Prof. Barry Everitt, who works on the brain mechanisms of addiction, and Prof. Lawrence Whalley, from the University of Aberdeen, who has been looking into how smoking can dimish brain power as you age. Also joining us on the show is Prof. Mark Griffiths, from Nottingham Trent University, the UK's only professor of gambling addiction, who asks whether gambling can genuinely be considered an addiction, like nicotine or heroin.
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Questions
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Is the smoking vaccine safe in conjunction with things like anti-depressants?
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I can't foresee any possible difficulties with antidepressants. We'd like to include this in further trials.
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I'm an ex-smoker. Every so often I get a dream that I'm smoking and think that it's ok. Is that normal?
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It's not unusual for people to dream about things that have happened in the past. It's much better to dream about it than actually do it!
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Does the nicotine vaccine stop the cravings to smoke?
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Probably not. The mechanism works by stopping the effects, and so might actually increase the cravings. The vaccine is probably best used in combination with something that helps with the withdrawal symptoms. However, by stopping the effects, it also helps to break the cycle of reinforcement. Eventually this may lead to people stopping people smoking because it does nothing to help the cravings.
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Are fizzy and sweet drinks addictive?
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Coca Cola, most other fizzy drinks and cold remedies contain huge amount of caffeine. This is a legal drug that gives you energy and perks you up. This is why taking certain 'flu remedies make you feel more awake and generally much better. These are similar effects to those found when drinking coffee. There are specific receptors in your brain for caffeine. These interact with a part of the brain that uses the reward-chemical dopamine, the same system activated by drugs such as cocaine. Although caffeine and cocaine don't give the same kind of rush effect, both have a common mechanism. It's also worth bearing in mind that tea also contains a lot of caffeine.
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Nicorette gum has helped me to give up smoking. What happens if I get addicted to the gum?!
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Nicotine gum is useful because it provides a bridge while you are trying to stop. It won't cure your addiction but helps ease the withdrawal symptoms. At the end of the day, the gum doesn't cause damage like smoking does, and so the gum is a much better option. Smoking causes a third of all cancers and the total number of deaths attributable to smoking is 120 000 per year. This is roughly the same as those washed away in the tsunami and is the same as a jumbo jet crashing in this country every day. Smoking does cause lung cancer, but most people don't live long enough to get it: they die of heart disease long before this.
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In the Western world we seem more addicted to food than anything else. Cigarettes seem to suppress hunger, and this appears to be a big attraction, especially for young women.
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Indeed, there's quite a lot of evidence that high fat foods have effects on some of the same brain systems as certain addictive drugs. It is also true that cigarettes are anorexic agents - not that long ago cigarettes were prescribed to reduce appetite and assist in weight loss.
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| Interviews
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Dr. Campbell Bunce Campbell - We've come up with a novel way to help addicts kick both the smoking and cocaine habit: a kind of anti-addiction vaccine. Using the vaccine helps to prevent the high people get from t
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Professor Lawrence Whalley Lawrence - We looked at archives of peoples' IQ tests from 1932 and 1947. We used this childhood data to look at lifelong changes in mental ability. These people are now old and we are
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Professor Mark Griffiths
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Professor Barry Everitt
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Fact or Fiction
Taste buds on the tip of your tongue recognise salty flavours
 
![]() It's False
- Taste buds on the tip of your tongue detect sweetness. Saltiness is
picked up by the sides of the tongue and more bitter flavours towards
the back.
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China is one of the largest producers of wool in the world
![]() It's False
- China is actually the world's largest consumer of wool, buying up nearly
400,000 tonnes of the stuff every year. The world's leading wool producer
is, of course, Australia which shears 5440,000 tonnes of wool of sheep
every year.
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Female sea horses find the sea horse equivalent of a 'beer-belly'
attractive
![]() It's True - Unlike most animals, it's actually the male seahorses
that rear young in a brood pouch on their fronts. The female deposits
eggs into the brood pouch and the male nurtures them. Females prefer males
with a big paunch because this usually means more room for eggs. For humans
you just substitute 'house', or 'car', for 'pouch'.
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Malaysia is the world's leading rubber producer
![]() It's False - Thailand
is actually the world no. 1 rubber producer, exporting 2,737,000 tonnes
of rubber a year - half a million tonnes more than the US.
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The world cream-cracker eating record is held by a man who wolfed
down 5 cream crackers in 15 seconds
![]() It's False - That's a tall order.
But Jeffrey Koh, 50, recently became the world's fastest eater of dry
biscuits when he managed to cram down 3 cream crackers in 14.45 seconds,
smashing the previous record of 49.15 seconds !
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The formula (32C + 16F + 11H + 14P + 15A) divided by 4.4 indicates
the amount of energy needed to boil one kilogram of water
![]() It's False It's
actually a formula dreamed up by researchers at London's Institute of
Psychiatry for predicting how popular you are ! The letters, which are
scored out of 5, refer to keeping Contact with friends, Facilitating entertainment,
Humour, Personality and Attractiveness.
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There are more pets cats in American than people
![]() It's False - Cats
are indeed the yanks best friend - there are 66 million of them in homes
around America - but they are still outnumbered by people about 4 to 1.
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A madcap French inventor has produced a pair of bionic boots which
catapult you out of the way if you stand on a landmine
![]() It's True - Christophe
Cayrol has produced a pair of boots with built-in ultra-sensitive metal-detectors
capable of picking up as little as a gram of metal in the soil. When the
new shoes detect a mine below the surface they trigger an electrode on
the lower leg which causes the muscles to pull the leg back out of harms
way, preventing you from treading on (and detonating) the mine.
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The average person has about 10,000 taste buds
![]() It's True - At around
age 20 the average person has about 10,000 taste buds but this number
declines with age so elderly people may have as few as half this number.
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