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New Pain Drug from Puffer Fish Nixes to Reason for Resort to Assisted Suicide

Neurotoxin Could Revolutionize Treatment of Intractable Pain

VANCOUVER, September 29, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Euthanasia advocates often cite extreme cases of intractable pain in cancer as a justification for 'compassionate' assisted suicide. Now the argument could be made moot by a little spiny fish popular with Japanese restaurant goers as Fugu, the daredevil dish. The lowly puffer fish emits one of nature's strongest neural toxins. The poison, called tetrodotoxin, can cause numbness, respiratory failure and sometimes death, but becomes completely harmless and beneficial for controlling pain when processed into the drug, Tectin.

Dr. May Ong-Lam, an oncologist at St. Paul's Hospital is involved in the testing of the drug for cancer patients. She says, "Definitely one of our patients received a significant benefit after she had damage to nerves in her arm from radiation treatment which was very painful. This patient took Tectin for two days intramuscularly and the analgesic effect lasted about three weeks, a significant result."

Vancouver-based International Wex Technologies Inc. is working to develop the drug, which is as much as 3000 times stronger than morphine. The current debate on euthanasia often centres around cancer patients who can suffer extreme pain from the disease and from radiation and other therapies. This development could be important in the trial of Evelyn Martens, a Victoria woman who was head of the Right to Die Network of Canada who is accused of assisting two BC women to commit suicide.

With Tectin, the Phase II trial results showed that pain could be relieved for up to two weeks in some patients. Based on these results, the company is pursuing a larger trial. The current trial is a double-blind and placebo-controlled study designed to compare the efficacy and safety of Tectin versus placebo in moderate to severe inadequately controlled cancer-related pain.

"We are definitely encouraged by the Phase IIa results," said Dr. Neil Hagen. "We believe that the current study will be one of the largest and most important Canadian clinical trials conducted to date to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a drug for medically refractory cancer pain."

BC Catholic Coverage:
http://bcc.rcav.org/04-09-20/index.htm

Puffer Fish Facts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pufferfish

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