When are journalists and scientists going to learn? "Cure" just isn't an acceptable term to use in describing test tube research, unless you're talking about a new way to treat ham.

An Associated Press story Friday began: "Scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School are part of a team that has discovered a possible cause of prostate cancer, a finding they say could result in better forms of treatment or possibly a cure."

Maybe this is an important finding. Maybe years from now it will lead to a treatment. But cure? It's a bit premature to talk about possible cures when you haven't even treated one person based on the new finding.

Herceptin has been used to treat advanced breast cancer, but three New England Journal of Medicine articles this week suggest the drug could work against an aggressive early-stage breast cancer.

Some news stories allow researchers (including a National Cancer Institute researcher) to use words like "cure" in describing the drug. Other experts were quoted calling the latest studies on the drug "revolutionary...stunning...jaw-dropping." And some stories didn't challenge those claims or that language.

But Rita Rubin of USA Today included caution in her story: "Barbara Brenner of Breast Cancer Action, an education and advocacy group, called use of the word 'cure' in this case 'outrageous,' because the studies on average followed women for only a year or two."

In the San Jose Mercury News, Brenner was quoted again: "The annals of breast cancer are filled with stories like this one in which the hype hurts thousands of women and their loved ones."

Jeff Donn of the Associated Press had a quote in his story: "I think it's way too soon to talk about a cure,'' said Debbie Saslow, director of the breast cancer section of the American Cancer Society."

Good science doesn't need hype. Good drugs need to stand the test of time. Thank goodness some journalists are countering the hype that they're encountering and concentrating more on evidence than emotion and excitement.

The University of Minnesota issued a news release this week reading, in part: "For the first time, stem cell researchers at the University of Minnesota have coaxed human embryonic stem cells to create cancer-killing cells in the laboratory, paving the way for future treatments for various types of cancers (or tumors). The research will be published in the October 15 issue of the Journal of Immunology."

Local media picked up the story, including a WCCO report that said, in part: "Researchers expect to begin testing on animals within a couple of months, but it will be a few years before the research will be tested on people. The research will be published in the Oct. 15 issue of the Journal of Immunology."

If such a result had been reported by the University of Wisconsin or the University of Iowa, you can bet that WCCO would not have reported on it. Tell me the last such study they reported on from the Journal of Immunology. But because it was local, it was newsworthy. I don't buy it. It was a preliminary finding in lab dishes -- not even in mice yet. Good science, no doubt. But let's apply consistent news judgment to such preliminary science stories.

KSTP reported: "Researchers at the University of Minnesota have made progress in fighting cancer." That's hyperbole. They made progress in a test tube. Nothing has yet been shown in people -- not even in mice.

Canadian drug policy researcher Alan Cassels observes October as breast cancer awareness month by analyzing the hype of breast cancer drug Herceptin. He writes: "The media pushed the glee meter into the red zone, with words like 'breakthrough,' 'wonder drug,' and 'impressive advance,' overblown, laudatory adjectives that I admonish journalism students to strenuously avoid."

Cassels concludes his column: "We all want new and better breast cancer treatments, but that doesn’t mean we should allow selective and misleading reports of a drug’s benefits to drain our public health care system of precious dollars, and put suffering patients on a roller coaster of hope and despair."