Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

Comment Permalink
Nicholas Reville1
0
0

I certainly will!  Hoping to get a substack going in the next month or so.

Reply
See in context
by Nicholas Reville
2 min read 15

28

Global health & developmentForecastingOpportunities to take actionPolicyUnited StatesRequests (open)Vaccines
Frontpage

UPDATES:  

  1. We just launched a new substack, called Curing Addiction. 
  2. And here's a new EA forum post with the latest on what we're doing.

 

Hi

I'm working on a research, policy, and advocacy project that's looking at breakthrough treatments for opiates, cocaine, and alcohol addictions and overdoses.  There are radical new treatments in development, including several in Phase I, such as:

• Vaccines for fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and oxycodone 

• More effective non-opiate painkillers

• Drugs that reduce addictiveness and craving 

My growing belief is that (1) negative impact of the addiction crisis in the US and around the world is underestimated, (2) breakthrough medical treatments are the only realistic way to actually solve the problem, and (3) research and development of these treatments is radically and irrationally underfunded (see the NIH HEAL Initiative for some funding that is happening). At this stage, I'm working to put together strong evidence for all three points.

And I'm looking for help! The goal is to build a powerful argument that this space lacks funding and political urgency relative to its potential and then advance that case to the public and policy makers.  I've been doing some writing that may become a public substack and have done a lot of research already on the state of the field and the key players.  I don't think this information has been brought together anywhere publicly before.

My background is in public policy and tech-- I went to Brown for public policy, started and ran award-winning open-source and tech rights advocacy non-profit organizations, and then had a successful run in for-profit tech, which has given me the ability to choose my next project without worrying about income.  I also have a science background so I'm able to read and understand the literature on these emerging treatments to a moderate level of granularity.

I'm making good progress myself but could use help in a few areas and I think having a small team of folks who are volunteering together could work really well and would be pretty fun.

Skills I'm looking for:

• It would be great to have someone looking at the numbers and building the analytic case for investment.  For example, I believe that in the US overdoses are the 3rd largest cause of years of life lost behind only heart disease and cancer, but I need a little help locking down the numbers on that since the overdose stats are buried within 'accidents' mortality reporting.  Similarly, I want to quantify some costs of the drug war on global development, impact of drug related crime in the US and globally, etc etc.

• A biology PhD would be great to have on this ragtag squad.

• Anyone with professional expertise in health policy would be super helpful.

• Anyone with professional experience in bringing drugs to market would be very helpful for evaluating timelines and likelihood of approval for various treatments, as part of building the case for increased investment.

• Someone who is good at turning numbers into clean charts and graphics would be very helpful for making strong presentation materials.

If you're interested or have questions or suggestions or know of resources that have addressed this topic that I may have missed, please message me on the forum!  I'm new here, so I apologize if I'm not familiar with forum practices and etiquette.

28

1
0

Reactions

1
0
Mentioned in

More posts like this

Comments15


Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
Stan Pinsent13
3
0

I think you could build a very compelling case for this. Even if official data sources do underestimate key numbers like overdose deaths, they are still a stirring call to action.

  1. Drug problems have got considerably worse in the past decade. This CDC source implies that overdose rates have more than doubled since 2015. Much of the increase came during the pandemic, which could add a little narrative spice to your argument.

2. Other "similar" problems are not getting worse. Other "despair" indicators like suicide and depression appear to be stable. Road accidents and violence have fallen. On one hand it's a bit sneaky to pick and choose comparisons like this, but it could be argued that they are all societal problems that often cause (very) early death. They're tragic.

3. Vaccines/ other pharma interventions may offer an unusually tractable and scalable solution. Addiction and all of the other problems in the chart above are very difficult problems to fight. At best, interventions usually take a chunk out of the burden but offer no hope of big change. Drug interventions can be controversial, with effects of uncertain sign. If you can show that your ideas are significantly better, you are doing well.

I expect that a major difficulty is that your solutions involve developing new vaccines/drugs, which is of course an expensive, unknown and long process. Will pharma companies see potential for a profit? Is there scientific grounding for optimism on these new drugs being possible?

Unfortunately I don't have the spare capacity to volunteer much time. I'd be interested in giving feedback on any future work. Good luck!

Reply
Nicholas Reville2
0
0

Thanks Stan, I really appreciate it!  I have several short articles that I'm writing covering various aspects of this and will reach out to get your feedback when I'm closer.  

On question 3-- yes, I think there is reason for optimism that the new treatments under development can work, including vaccines, non-opiate painkillers, addiction reducers, etc.  Il'l be writing about this very soon and also looking for experienced pharma folks for thoughts on pipeline to market timing and obstacles.  

Whether these treatment will be game-changers or useful additions to our limited toolbox remains to be seen.  And whether they will take 15 years to get to market or 5 is what I'm hoping to influence.  But there are some human trials already in progress on exciting stuff.

Reply
John Salter3
0
0

This is one of the most interesting ideas I've seen proposed on the forum. I'd love to see more research on this.

Reply
Nicholas Reville1
0
0

Thanks!  More soon...

Reply
Matt_Lerner2
1
0

I'm also strongly interested in this research topic — note that although the problem is worst in the U.S., the availability and affordability of fentanyl (which appears to be driving OD deaths) suggests that this could easily spread to LMICs in the medium-term, suggesting that preventive measures such as vaccines could even be cost-effective by traditional metrics.

Reply
Nicholas Reville1
0
0

totally agree -- i think fentanyl is rightly understood as a huge a new threat, but i dont think there's a realization generally that fentanyl is essentially a technological advancement.  much stronger, much smaller, cheaper.  makes efforts to prevent drug trafficking much harder and makes harm reduction and social interventions much more difficult as well.  we beat cigarettes largely with price increases, fentanyl is a price decrease.  also it has shorter half life than heroin so people use it more often every day, which creates all sorts of other risks.  all of this is to say-- yes, fentanyl seems more likely to spread to countries that have been ok so far.

Reply
Jason2
2
0

I'm none of the things you're looking for, but please do let us know if you start publishing in a public space! 

Reply
Nicholas Reville1
0
0

I certainly will!  Hoping to get a substack going in the next month or so.

Reply
SummaryBot1
0
0

Executive summary: The author seeks collaborators for a project arguing that breakthrough addiction and overdose treatments are radically underfunded given their potential impact.

Key points:

  1. Emerging medical treatments like vaccines and non-addictive painkillers could effectively solve the addiction crisis but lack funding and urgency.
  2. The negative impacts of addiction are underestimated globally in terms of lives lost, costs, and inhibited development.
  3. Collaborators are sought to build an analytic case for more investment by quantifying costs and impacts.
  4. Help is welcome from those with expertise in biology, health policy, drug development, data analysis, and presentation.
  5. If interested in volunteering, please message the author through the forum.

 

 

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.

Reply
Nicholas Reville1
0
0

Hi-- I just posted a paid part-time research position for this project, in case you know anyone!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1STK_E23WneUAT416cKSruCWNVm4SNVI-yP58oSQOdIo/edit?pli=1

Reply
Cade Mataya1
0
0

Hi! I think this seems like a really promising area of research. I have been working in public policy for awhile (admittedly not health policy, though). I am okay at making graphics in Tableau, though not #1 by any stretch. (I am 100% willing to learn, though!). If there is any other help that you may need, I would love to stay in the loop on this project. 

 

Furthermore, I would like to know if you have any particular goals for this research. Do you plan on starting a nonprofit, conducting advocacy, raising funding for more research on these potential treatments, etc.?

Reply
Nicholas Reville1
0
0

Great, I'll DM you and we can stay in touch.  

My goal is to first build the case that the space is underfunded, and assuming that it feels convincing to me and others, try to push for more awareness and funding in the space.  This could mean creating a formal or informal organization or it could just mean creating some kind of movement, momentum, etc.  I'd love to get some of the leading researchers onto the popular health podcasts, help them create more powerful presentations for the public, talk to NIH researchers, politicians, and more.  I think there's a lot of low (and high) hanging fruit here.  

But definitely starting humbly, trying to get the science and the facts right and going from there.

Reply
Nicholas Reville1
0
0

Quick update to let you know that we just launched a new substack:  https://curingaddiction.substack.com/

Hope you will subscribe!

Reply
Benevolent_Rain1
0
0

If you DM me your bio I might be able to help with parts of what you're asking for. Not making any promises though!

Reply
Nicholas Reville1
0
0

OK, I will!  Thanks!

Reply
More from Nicholas Reville
47
The Market Failure that Will Force Doctors to Keep Writing Opioid Prescriptions
Nicholas Reville
· · 2m read
5
5
34
New org + substack focused on breakthrough treatments for addiction and solving market failures in drug policy
Nicholas Reville
· · 5m read
6
6
View more
Curated and popular this week
Ben_West🔸
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
> Summary: We propose measuring AI performance in terms of the length of tasks AI agents can complete. We show that this metric has been consistently exponentially increasing over the past 6 years, with a doubling time of around 7 months. Extrapolating this trend predicts that, in under a decade, we will see AI agents that can independently complete a large fraction of software tasks that currently take humans days or weeks. > > The length of tasks (measured by how long they take human professionals) that generalist frontier model agents can complete autonomously with 50% reliability has been doubling approximately every 7 months for the last 6 years. The shaded region represents 95% CI calculated by hierarchical bootstrap over task families, tasks, and task attempts. > > Full paper | Github repo Blogpost; tweet thread. 
Joris 🔸
 ·  · 5m read
 · 
Last week, I participated in Animal Advocacy Careers’ Impactful Policy Careers programme. Below I’m sharing some reflections on what was a really interesting week in Brussels! Please note I spent just one week there, so take it all with a grain of (CAP-subsidized) salt. Posts like this and this one are probably much more informative (and assume less context). I mainly wrote this to reflect on my time in Brussels (and I capped it at 2 hours, so it’s not a super polished draft). I’ll focus mostly on EU careers generally, less on (EU) animal welfare-related careers. Before I jump in, just a quick note about how I think AAC did something really cool here: they identified a relatively underexplored area where it’s relatively easy for animal advocates to find impactful roles, and then designed a programme to help these people better understand that area, meet stakeholders, and learn how to find roles. I also think the participants developed meaningful bonds, which could prove valuable over time. Thank you to the AAC team for hosting this! On EU careers generally * The EU has a surprisingly big influence over its citizens and the wider world for how neglected it came across to me. There’s many areas where countries have basically given a bunch (if not all) of their decision making power to the EU. And despite that, the EU policy making / politics bubble comes across as relatively neglected, with relatively little media coverage and a relatively small bureaucracy. * There’s quite a lot of pathways into the Brussels bubble, but all have different ToCs, demand different skill sets, and prefer different backgrounds. Dissecting these is hard, and time-intensive * For context, I have always been interested in “a career in policy/politics” – I now realize that’s kind of ridiculously broad. I’m happy to have gained some clarity on the differences between roles in Parliament, work at the Commission, the Council, lobbying, consultancy work, and think tanks. * The absorbe
Max Taylor
 ·  · 9m read
 · 
Many thanks to Constance Li, Rachel Mason, Ronen Bar, Sam Tucker-Davis, and Yip Fai Tse for providing valuable feedback. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer. Artificial General Intelligence (basically, ‘AI that is as good as, or better than, humans at most intellectual tasks’) seems increasingly likely to be developed in the next 5-10 years. As others have written, this has major implications for EA priorities, including animal advocacy, but it’s hard to know how this should shape our strategy. This post sets out a few starting points and I’m really interested in hearing others’ ideas, even if they’re very uncertain and half-baked. Is AGI coming in the next 5-10 years? This is very well covered elsewhere but basically it looks increasingly likely, e.g.: * The Metaculus and Manifold forecasting platforms predict we’ll see AGI in 2030 and 2031, respectively. * The heads of Anthropic and OpenAI think we’ll see it by 2027 and 2035, respectively. * A 2024 survey of AI researchers put a 50% chance of AGI by 2047, but this is 13 years earlier than predicted in the 2023 version of the survey. * These predictions seem feasible given the explosive rate of change we’ve been seeing in computing power available to models, algorithmic efficiencies, and actual model performance (e.g., look at how far Large Language Models and AI image generators have come just in the last three years). * Based on this, organisations (both new ones, like Forethought, and existing ones, like 80,000 Hours) are taking the prospect of near-term AGI increasingly seriously. What could AGI mean for animals? AGI’s implications for animals depend heavily on who controls the AGI models. For example: * AGI might be controlled by a handful of AI companies and/or governments, either in alliance or in competition. * For example, maybe two government-owned companies separately develop AGI then restrict others from developing it. * These actors’ use of AGI might be dr
Recent opportunities in Global health & development
20
Hiring pre-docs
Eva
· · 1m read
0
0
113
USAID Aid Freeze - Bridge Fund established - Donate now for immediate relief
James&Joe
· · 1m read
15
15
31
Impact in Global Development: A Discussion Series
DavidNash
· · 5m read
1
1
View more