Prevention Matters

The possibility of a preventive breast cancer vaccine becoming available for humans was named the “Best Prevention Idea of the Week,” while twenty percent of college students admitting to driving while drunk was named the “Worst Prevention Idea of the Week."

BEST

Breast Cancer Vaccine Possible, Scientists Say

A study in mice suggests that a preventive breast cancer vaccine might be possible in humans, scientists say.

Women may begin taking part in the next stage of research as soon as next year, they added.

"We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines have prevented many childhood diseases," principal investigator Vincent Tuohy, an immunologist in Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, said in a news release. "If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer."

WORST

1 in 5 College Students Admitted to Drunk Driving, Study Found


Drinking and driving among college students is still a major public health problem, new research reveals, with one in five admitting to driving while drunk and 40 percent acknowledging they have ridden with a drunk driver.

Equally worrisome, their tendency to drive under the influence soars when they hit the minimum legal drinking age of 21.

The findings were gleaned from a study co-authored by Amelia M. Arria, director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, that followed more than 1,250 first-year college students enrolled at a large mid-Atlantic university.