US could fall behind in science

The United States still holds a preeminent position in the world of science, but if public funding and popular support erode further, its grasp may become less secure, according to David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate, former MIT professor and former president of CalTech.

In Boston for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which he leads, Baltimore said countries, such as India and China, are gaining ground, although it will be decades before they represent a real threat to US leadership.

"We are way ahead of everybody else in the world. What we need to do is stay there," he said. "That's what we are doing badly."

ELIZABETH COONEY

Women treated for a highly survivable form of breast cancer tend to overestimate the likelihood that the cancer will return,researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported last week.

A survey of nearly 500 women who had been treated for ductal carcinoma in-situ - uncontrolled growth of cells within the milk ducts - found that more than half believed they had at least a "moderate likelihood" of the cancer returning within five years.

The risk of ductal carcinoma in-situ spreading outside the breast - and thus becoming life-threatening - is less than 1 percent. The chance of the growth returning to the breast is 1 percent after a mastectomy and less than 10 percent after breast-conserving surgery, the scientists reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

STEPHEN SMITH

Academic medical centers are increasingly adopting policies designed to clamp down on potential conflicts of interest by doctors or researchers. But they have been slower to impose rules governing payments to the institutions themselves, according to a survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A team led by Eric G. Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital found that only 38 percent of the medical schools responding to a 2006 questionnaire had an institutional conflict-of-interest policy and 37 percent said they were planning to institute one.

In a companion editorial, David J. Rothman of Columbia University, praised both BU and UMass for policies that ban gifts or payments to clinicians. They could serve as models for other academic medical centers that want to diminish the influence of drug and medical device makers, he wrote.

ELIZABETH COONEY

Dialysis patients shouldn't panic over the recent voluntary recall of a drug used as part of their kidney-failure treatments, but there is concern about a possible shortage, a Boston kidney specialist said.

Last Monday the US Food and Drug Administration announced that Baxter Healthcare Corp. had stopped making multi-dose vials of the blood-thinning drug heparin after reports of 350 serious allergic reactions, including four deaths, in patients who received the drug. It still makes single-dose vials. Most of the problems occurred in patients who were given large doses.

Switching to heparin made by other manufacturers would be the first choice for dialysis patients, said Dr. Ajay Singh, who oversees the dialysis program at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

ELIZABETH COONEY