Cocaine vaccine.

Yale School of Medicine housing a Study concerning a vaccine against cocaine addiction is my local story for my journalism class. Several websites and newspapers like CNN and the New York Times reported the study. Even though both explained the main concept of the study, apparently led by Dr Thomas Kosten, the CNN article really explained in details the study and answered some of my questions but didn’t fill the reader’s ignorance about Dr Kosten’s identity and job, while the Times’ didn’t say much about the study and was completely devoting his article to Dr Kosten and the many reactions to his study. They simply mentioned something about the use of the antibiotics but no more. And I wanted to learn more about it and I started wondering things, details, deeper information, questions, so that I started preparing an interview. I collected information that I put on my wiki page on bhsjournalism.pbworks.com and made of this page my resource information. Dr Kosten is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. I read more attentively the articles from the newspapers and learned that Dr Bridget Martell, from Yale School of Medicine, was part of this study, and I wanted to know more about her role, and why they actually studied on that. So I contacted her by mail and I asked her, after introducing myself and making clear that my approach was within the framework of the journalism class of my High School, if we could meat or have a brief conversation so I could ask her some questions. She accepted and proposed a brief discussion over the phone, even though I would have preferred to see her. Our first appointment was a disaster. She had a medical emergency and she couldn’t warn me so I waited for four hours after calling three times, waiting for an answer. We finally agreed that it would be too difficult for her to actually take some real time to speak with me, because of the intensity of her job. I sent her a mail including my questions and she will answer those within the week. I’m happy to finally interview her but I’m disappointed because a mail questioning isn’t a real interview. The best thing that could have happened was if I actually had met her but it was impossible.

I am still waiting for her answers so I will be able to share those and my impressions with you. But I would like you to tell me what your impressions and questions are.

By the way, as I did to Dr Martell, I'd like to ask you: Do you think that this study is really relevant?