About eight people have been killed after gunmen attacked a hospital in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore. Dressed in police uniforms, up to four gunmen briefly seized hostages at the hospital, before escaping. Dozens of people wounded in Friday’s attacks on mosques in the city were being treated in the facility at the time of the assault. The authorities said they were pursuing the suspects after one was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with police. The gunmen were said to have failed in an attempt to reach a captured militant, injured in the mosque attacks, who was being treated at the hospital. “The operation is over,” an official, Shafiq Gujar, told AFP news agency. “It appears the attackers wanted to kill or release the accused.” Javed Ikram, chief executive of Jinnah hospital, told Reuters news agency that the gunmen had “barged into the hospital building and opened indiscriminate fire”. The assault came three days after suspected Sunni Muslim militants wearing suicide vests launched a gun and grenade attack on two Ahmadi prayer halls in Lahore and killed more than 80 worshippers from the minority religious community. The gunmen fled after this latest attack, police said. “They escaped from the scene,” Lahore commissioner Khusro Pervez Khan told Reuters. “We are in hot pursuit. We are chasing them. One of them was wounded.” Lahore has been battered by a series of deadly attacks in the last year by militants who have declared war on both the government and minority groups in the country.
American scientists say they have developed a vaccine which has prevented breast cancer from developing in mice. The researchers – whose findings are published in the journal, Nature – are now planning to conduct trials of the drug in humans. But they warn that it could be some years before the vaccine is widely available. The immunologist who led the research says the vaccine targets a protein found in most breast tumours. Vincent Tuohy said: “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. Unique challenge “If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer.” In the study, genetically cancer-prone mice were vaccinated – half with a vaccine containing ?-lactalbumin and half with a vaccine that did not contain the antigen. None of the mice vaccinated with ?-lactalbumin developed breast cancer, while all of the other mice did. The US has approved two cancer-prevention vaccines, one against cervical cancer and one against liver cancer. However, these vaccines target viruses – the human papillomavirus (HPV) and the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) – not cancer formation itself. In terms of developing a preventive vaccine, cancer presents problems not posed by viruses – while viruses are recognised as foreign invaders by the immune system, cancer is not. Cancer is an over-development of the body’s own cells. Trying to vaccinate against this cell over-growth would effectively be vaccinating against the recipient’s own body, destroying healthy tissue.
