Breakthrough cure (for mice)

Many a science writer has fantasized about capping a story with the headline “Good News for Sick Mice!” One of the toughest struggles is deciding how to cover a story that has produced tantalizing, even amazing, results in laboratory animals but could well be a total bust by the time it gets to humans. That issue came up in early July, when Elan Pharmaceuticals, an Irish company with laboratories in South San Francisco, announced a vaccine that is remarkably effective at treating Alzheimer’s-like symptoms in a genetically engineered strain of mouse. These mice don’t get Alzheimer’s or severe mental impairment — or even the brain ‘tangles’ characteristic of the disease. They do, however, develop amyloid plaques, which are present in many, but not all, brains ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease. The company’s experimental vaccine vanquished the plaques, at least in a handful of mice. That result was published in Nature, and reporters were left to decide how to handle the announcement. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times considered the news marginal enough to rate a few paragraphs buried deep in the paper. But many others took the bait and dusted off a word that’s all but taboo among US science writers: “Breakthrough.” And television in particular attacked this story with relish. “We are going to begin tonight with the very best news there has been in many years, perhaps ever, about one of the most debilitating chronic diseases that haunts us,” Peter Jennings told his audience on ABC’s World News Tonight. The report was long on excitement about this “breakthrough” and short on caution. It was also a bit confused on some of the basic facts, declaring that “one in 10 people who suffer from Alzheimer’s is over 65.” Other broadcasters also leaped for the “breakthrough” word, including CBS’s This Morning. Putting the best possible spin on the story, this report interviewed an official from the Alzheimer’s Association — whose job is to raise money for research. “We’re going to benefit from this no matter whether it works in humans or not,” said Bill Thies. “It’s going to give us very important information.”