A-Z Guide to the Year in Medicine

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CANCER Thanks to early detection and better prevention programs, deaths from cancer continue their downward trend. Some highlights:

Breast Cancer When the authors of a large international study reported that Herceptin, a powerful drug for treating advanced cases of so-called HER2-positive breast cancers, could also dramatically reduce--by 46%--recurrence of early-stage HER2 cancers, they triggered impassioned requests for the drug by patients and fierce debate among doctors. At issue was whether the trial, which had reported interim--not final--results, was reliable enough to persuade doctors to change their treatment practices. Most physicians have decided to wait for the trial to be completed in 2008 before making any decisions.

Colon Cancer Keeping colon cancer away may be as simple as taking a calcium supplement. One study reported that patients taking 1,200 mg of the mineral daily for four years had 36% fewer colon polyps, even five years after the trial ended, than those who didn't take calcium. In a separate study, women taking more than 800 mg of calcium every day reduced their risk of colorectal cancer as much as 46%.

Prostate Cancer The sun may be bad for your skin, but it could do wonders for the prostate. A new study found that men with high exposure to the sun had half the risk of prostate cancer than men who spent most of their days indoors. Why? The prostate uses vitamin D--which the body makes in response to sunlight--to help prostate cells grow normally and crowd out cancer cells in the organ.

RUSSEL WONG FOR TIME

CLONING Scientists had cloned sheep, pigs, cattle, mice, rabbits, horses and cats but, until this year, never a dog. Man's best friend, it turns out, is extremely difficult to duplicate. It was Woo Suk Hwang and his team at Seoul National University who finally succeeded in turning a single cell from the ear of an Afghan hound into a genetically identical puppy. Hwang was back in the news last week when he admitted lying about the source of some of the human eggs used in an earlier stem-cell experiment. Nevertheless, many scientists suspect the techniques Hwang perfected to clone a dog could be adapted to duplicate almost any species--including a primate.