Pubdate: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 Source: Reuter By Adrian Edwards XA LINH, Vietnam, Aug 17 (Reuter) Tran Khuong Dan is not your normal physician. His father was an opium addict, his brother died of an overdose. Tragedy led him to explore the mindbending postwar world of Saigon opium dens. ``You know, after the war ended, hundreds of wounded veterans were addicted to the painkiller morphine,'' he says. ``The idea of finding an antidrug addiction medicine came into my mind during the time I lived in a neighbourhood of drug addicts in Saigon.'' Dan turned himself into an addict and lived for himself the cravings associated with opium addiction or chasing the heroin dragon, as well as the torment of withdrawal. He sold his home. He travelled to live among tribal groups in northern Vietnam where he sought an answer to addiction in traditional herbal remedies among communities where opium had been grown for decades. Fifteen years after that quest began, the 55yearold may have found a cure, with potential implications for addicts worldwide. UNITED NATIONS TESTING UNDER WAY In June this year the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced it was stepping up testing of the medicine that Dan created, a fierytasting brown syrup named Heantos. Roy Morey, the UNDP's Washington director, told a news conference in the United States that the medicine had already been tested on 3,000 Vietnamese addicts. He said trials had shown a high degree of success and reported extraordinary results, with only about a 30 percent rate of recidivism, or readdiction, and minimal sideeffects. Full testing would require two more years, but followup studies were under way in both Vietnam and the United States by the Vietnamese government and the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. ``It's very exciting,'' says Laura Dillon of the UNDP's Hanoi office. ``I'm told normal withdrawal from addiction can feel like thousands of maggots crawling up your legs. It drives people mad. Heantos seems to avoid those effects.'' MEDICINE IS TESTED...ON TAXI DRIVERS At a small centre in Hoa Binh, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) west of Hanoi, nervous heroin addicts arrive at a small rehabilitation centre to begin carefully supervised treatment. One is a young Hanoi taxi driver, a group notorious for its use of drugs. He breaks down in tears as he is searched in front of foreign reporters. Patients who have already received treatment declare the process a success. ``I no longer have cravings since I took Heantos,'' says Le Ngoc Binh, a young woman who until June was a heroin addict. ``Now I can't think of drugs. If I do it makes me vomit.'' Doctors say the medicine is delivered in two doses. The first eliminates withdrawal symptoms and within a week leaves patients able to abstain. The second course is taken a month later to prevent readdiction. It's said to have a quick effect on addicts to heroin, cocaine and some addictive medicines. For opium users the process is slower. In Vietnam, the costs of treatment are typically around $30 per person, about a third of the cost of existing alternatives. The medicine is nonaddictive, and so far apart from difficulties noted by some patients in sleeping during the first course few sideeffects have been noted. CHALLENGE TO PROVE IF HEANTOS LIVES UP TO ITS CLAIMS Eighty kilometres (50miles) away in Xa Linh, a poor village near the Laos border, 63yearold Hang A Trang scoops opium paste into a pipe, holds it over an oillamp flame in a dimly lit room, inhales and lays back in ecstasy. The image is straight out of a 19th century East Asia of opium dens and crazed addicts. But for thousands of people across the thinly policed and ancient world of northern Indochina it's a reality that remains today. ``I used to plant opium to earn money. But I used it as a medicine, and became hooked,'' said the addict of 34 years, adding that he has little faith in medicines and believes he would suffer relapse. For the scientists examining Heantos the scepticism may be of a more professional nature. But it underlies key questions about a treatment that, if it lives up to its almost mythical billing, could affect lives around the world. Estimates of the cost of drug abuse in the United States alone range from $70 billion to $80 billion a year for treatment, crime associated with drug addiction and the cost of AIDS, which can be transmitted by users sharing needles. Dan, however, says he's not interested in the possible money. ``I'm a doctor. All I want is to cure people,'' he says. REUTER