Completed BCSS Projects

Committee on Immunotherapies and Sustained-Release Formulations for Treating Drug Addiction

Publication: New Treatments for Addiction: Behavioral, Ethical, Legal, and Social Questions

The NRC Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, the IOM Board on Neuroscience and Behavioral Health, and the IOM Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention are convening a consensus committee to identify and define the behavioral, ethical, legal, and social questions that will be raised in determining who should be given vaccines or depot medications and under what circumstances in order to prevent and/or treat drug addiction, with safety as an ever-present issue. The committee will include drug abuse prevention and treatment experts, vaccine and depot medication development specialists, epidemiologists familiar with issues in addiction research and with vaccine deployment, health economists familiar with addiction and/or vaccine deployment costs, bioethicists, experts in decision and risk analysis, and drug abuse policy and legal experts. Committee members will review the literature on the use of pharmacological agents in drug abuse prevention and treatment interventions and will also review the best clinical practices in the deployment of vaccines, including safety issues.

Members of the NRC Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences and the IOM Board on Neuroscience and Behavioral Health will serve as the organizing group for a two-day conference on the behavioral, ethical, legal, and social issues posed by genetics research on drug addiction. The members of both boards have wide-ranging expertise and the ability to synthesize ideas from multiple disciplines, which will be essential in deciding the topics and issues to be covered in the conference. The conference will highlight speakers who are experts in the behavioral and social sciences, including psychology, sociology, and anthropology, as well as experts in biological and behavioral genetics (both in animals and in humans), health care policy, the law, and ethics, and most importantly, those whose knowledge of the etiology, prevention, and treatment of drug abuse makes their contributions most relevant.