Though a vaccine of this nature is yet to be introduced, it is something that scientists are focusing their efforts on. They are hard at work developing shots that could one day release people from the grip of addiction. A professor from Scripps Research Institute, Dr. Kim D. Janda, has made this research and has poured countless hours of research into this work which has consumed his life. He views this as an alternative to gums, patches, and even receptor inhibitors as a way to get people off of addictive substances. Dr. Janda, has been trying for more than 25 years to create shots and vaccines that would shut down the narcotic before it could take a hold of the body and brain.

Unlike preventive vaccines such as the ones for chicken pox, the measles, etc., this type of vaccine would be administered after user had already became addicted to a drug. Because addiction is now thought to cause physical changes in the brain, doctors today advocate and often prescribe medical treatments to patients that are addicts. The idea for an addiction vaccine made headlines when researchers had produced a shot that blocked the effects of heroin in rats. The rats that were given the vaccine didn't experience the effects of heroin and stopped helping themselves to the addictive drug, which made researchers conclude it was because it stopped having an addictive effect.

To this day, even though there have been many breakthroughs, the FDA has yet to approve any of Dr. Janda's vaccines. Dr. Janda's addiction vaccine theory is simple, just like vaccines against disease, they introduce a small amount of the foreign substance into the blood, causing the immune system to create antibodies that attack the foreign substance, and the next time it appears the body is immune. The problem with narcotics is that the molecules are much smaller than disease molecules therefore the immune system ignores them. To combat that, Dr. Janda attaches those molecules to larger ones to get the immune system to notice them and tricking it into making antibodies.

Today anti-opiates such as methadone are used to treat addicts which simply takes the drugs affects and replaces it with a different high. These treatments have proven to have severe side affects and an addict can simply quit taking them, rendering them useless. Hopefully with this new break through, Dr. Jahnda will get the opportunity to have hid very first FDA-approved drug which will be one of the most world changing medicines of its kind.