While I concede that the buprenorphine maintenance concept has shown limited success in studies such as the one in this article, I believe that it is largely ineffective as a treatment for opiate dependence. That is, of course, unless we are willing to admit that by "maintenance" we are merely assisting the addict in maintaining his addiction. The only proven treatment of opiate dependence is that of behavior modification, and the first behavior that must be modified is that of drug use. The addict must abstain from the ingestion of drugs before we can successfully address the underlying issues of dependence. The opioid antagonist and agonist should be limited to the 14-day period of detox, and then only in a gradually declining dosage. The ultimate goal must be to eliminate daily dependence on substance use in a most immediate manner.

My guess is the most meaningful outcome of this study was that two Yale profs got a trip to the Far East and another article under their belt. Lets hope their next head-to-head has more worth, like maybe buprenorphine vs methadone. Oops, that one has been done, too. Methadone comes out ahead, but buprenorphine is more convenient for those who can pay for it.

Technically, it's a report on a report about the report. Seriously, however, Join Together simply does not have the resources to be reading and reviewing journal articles, a task that would take far longer than summarizing news stories. It is partly for this reason that we provide links to the primary source material whenever it is available. The hotlink to the Lancet in the above summary will take you directly to the abstract of the Yale study so you can read it and draw your own conclusions about the study.

Good idea, but you should be reviewing the Lancet article and providing more detail on results, rather than reporting on a report about an article written about a report on the subject.