HIV Digest	HIV Digest Archive

A Canadian government clinic in Vancouver will test, for the first time in North America, whether prescribing heroin can cut overdoses and HIV and hepatitis infections and reduce addicts' dependence on crime to obtain the drug.

Similar trials launched since the mid-1990s have worked. Programs in Switzerland and the Netherlands are continuing; Germany and Spain are running trials; and another is planned in Britain, according to lead researcher Dr. Martin Schechter, an HIV/AIDS scientist at the University of British Columbia. The Vancouver trial is aimed at hard-core addicts, age 25 and older, who have used heroin for at least five years and who have failed on methadone therapy at least twice. Schechter said 88 participants will receive pharmaceutical-grade heroin three times every day, and 70 will take oral methadone.

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Schechter argued that it is not unethical to treat addicts for whom other methods have failed. "They are breaking into cars, being hospitalized, having overdoses, getting hepatitis C and HIV, they're in the sex trade, and they're in rough shape," he said. Nearly 5,000 heroin addicts live in Downtown Eastside Vancouver.

However, the presence of such a facility just 23 miles from the US border has drawn criticism. Officials of the White House anti-drug office have called it unethical and an "inhumane medical experiment." Similar clinics are expected to open in Montreal and Toronto within the year. Responding to US politics, the scientists abandoned an earlier plan to open three US clinics.

Editor's Note: from Agence france Presse