A study published in the journal Nature Medicine claims that a vaccine appears to have prevented breast cancer in lab mice. The mice, genetically prone to develop breast cancer, were injected with a vaccine designed to provoke an immune response to a protein found in most breast tumors. None of the mice immunized with the vaccine developed breast cancer, compared to the control group in which every mouse developed breast cancer.
According to BBC News, the immunologist that lead the research, Dr. Vincent Tuohy of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, said, “If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer.”
“That is not a statement that any scientist should make,” says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Certainly at this stage, to extrapolate from this study on mice to human breast cancer is a blatant aggrandizement of the research. If he had said, ‘We have this promising mouse study and we need clinical trials in more animal species, and then hopefully in humans in the next three to five years,’ that would be one thing, but calling this ‘monumental’ and talking about ‘eliminating breast cancer’ is just irresponsible exaggeration.”
ACSH's Jeff Stier adds, “We have pharmaceuticals that have been scientifically proven to prevent breast cancer in women that are at an elevated risk for the disease. Why don’t we focus on what works instead of wild speculation? We’re all for research to prevent breast cancer, but it’s these unrealistic claims about research that upsets us.”