Prisoners implanted with unapproved addiction treatment 'pellet'

A Louisiana prisoner has been implanted with an unapproved 'pellet' to treat addiction. 

The inmate is soon to be released from a Louisiana Department of Corrections (DOC) facility and is the first of 10 patients that California-based BioCorRx intends to place the implant in. 

DOC doctors are surgically implanting devices that release naltrexone - an approved addiction medication - over the course of months. 

Health official sand ethicists are looking at the program with skepticism, arguing that instead of experimenting on this vulnerable population, US prisons should simply provide better access to already-existing addiction treatments.  

Inmates in the Louisiana Department of Corrections's prisons are being surgically implanted with an unproven 'pellet' to treat drug addiction, raising ethical and safety questions (file)

Inmates in the Louisiana Department of Corrections's prisons are being surgically implanted with an unproven 'pellet' to treat drug addiction, raising ethical and safety questions (file)

Over half of the prisoners incarcerated in the US have a substance misuse disorder, according to the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights.

The standard addiction treatment in jails and prisons in the US is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which can be helpful in addiction treatment - but is far and away most effective when given in conjunction with medication. 

But, even if they had been in recovery programs that included medically-assisted therapy (MAT) prior to their arrests, prisoners are not usually given access to drugs like buprenorphine or naltrexone. 

BioCorRx wants to change that - but their prisoner program is skipping some safety and efficacy steps. 

The company is developing two 'sustained release' versions of naltrexone.  

Naltrexone itself is already FDA approved to treat both alcohol and drug addiction. 

But BioCorRx's implant is a biodegradable pellet full of the addiction treatment, to be released over the course of three or four months, according to Houma Today, which has to be surgically implanted into a person's abdomen.

The implant

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