Vincent Dole

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Vincent Dole (born 1913 in Chicago, died August 1, 2006) was an American doctor, who, along with his wife Dr Marie Nyswander (died 1986), worked in heroin dependency treatment. He pioneered the use of methadone as a maintenance opioid and his work resulted in the partial re-legalization of opioid maintenance in the United States. For this contribution he was a recipient of the prestigious Lasker Award for Medicine, sometimes referred to as "America's Nobels".

[edit] Life

Dole was educated at Stanford University and Harvard University, earning degrees at both and joining the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1941. During World War II, he was a lieutenant commander at the Naval Medical Research Unit at The Rockefeller Hospital.

[edit] Heroin treatment

Supreme court interpretations of the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act had criminalized opioid dependency and thus the use of any opioid "for the sole purpose of maintenance" other than in terminally ill cancer patients. This criminalized the dependent individual as well as the physician who prescribed the drug.

In 1964, at Rockefeller Institute (now known as Rockefeller University), Dole and Nyswander treated twenty-two heroin addicted patients with methadone, a drug previously known as a potent dependency producing painkiller, and thus rarely used, and demonstrated that coupled with psychosocial interventions all these patients stopped heroin use and had a restored sense of self-worth, and resumed family responsibilities as well as employment. The doctors noted that although methadone satisfied the physical cravings of heroin addiction, it did not inflict the crippling effects and physical damage of heroin,especially those damaging effects secondary to its use parenterally. Patients would remain dependent on methadone - on "maintenance doses", but could otherwise continue their lives normally. Dependency refers simply to the biological effect of withdrawal sickness when methadone (or any dependency invoking drug) is stopped abruptly. Although in 2006 there are well over one million methadone-treated patients in the world, the treatment remains controversial, with figures such as Rudy Giuliani threatening to remove city-funded methadone programs as recently as 1998. To Mr Giuliani's credit shortly after he made the announcement that he intended to close all the programs in New York he reversed field. He provided the programs over which he had control, those that were part of the Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), sufficient funding to establish a robust vocational component, evening hours, comprehensive psychiatric, and family support services care.

Dole died in 2006 at the age of 93, from complications of a ruptured aorta, survived by his wife Margaret, his three children, and four stepchildren.