Slashdot Mirror
Sniffing Out Cancer
Makarand writes "Researchers at the Univeristy of Rome are developing an
electronic nose that
can sniff out cancer by sampling people's breath. The instrument uses sensors
that respond to the presence of chemical compounds in the patient's breath.
For example, lung cancer patients exhale alkanes and benzene derivatives
which the electronic nose will try to detect. The sensors are quartz crystal
sensors coated with a substance that binds to a range of organic chemicals.
If certain molecules in the breath bind to this surface coating they change
the natural vibration frequency of the crystal."
I think this will just pave the way for more social and economic discrimination for cancer patients (eg, insurance, housing, etc).
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Just wait until they patent the idea.....
I tell 'em right as the pen hits the paper on the contract.
"I've had cancer twice, three times if you count the relapse in '82 and I need to go to physical therapy at least once a week and I take an extra day off for Christmas vacation day or not and I'll expect to be paid for it."
I've never had a problem.
I don't know where to even begin with this. First of all, the dichotomy between "natural" vs. "unnatural" cancer is bizarre and incorrect. There are literally thousands of factors that influence whether someone gets cancer or not, from heredity to environmental factors to lifestyle. Should the non-smoker waitress who worked 30 years in the smoking section of a restaurant be discriminated against because her cancer isn't "natural"? And moreover, the context of the grandparent makes it even more repugnant to suggest that discrimination against cancer sufferers is a good thing. He was talking about health insurance and housing for goodness sake. Cancer patients are people in need, and lung cancer patients are in desperate (and usually immediate) need. To somehow try to apply some value judgment to their suffering is just sick. To suggest it's okay to discriminate against smokers with cancer is tantamount to saying that they deserve their illness. And honestly, nobody deserves cancer. How arrogant would you have to be to suggest otherwise?
Some diseases do produce characteristic smells.
Uncontrolled diabetes makes the breath smell a bit like nail varnish. Infections, liver disease and cancer also make distinct smells.
There is a big danger in using a test like this inappropriately for screening, as has already been aluded to.
Breast screening, prostate screening and even cervical cancer screening are all not good screening tests (as they stand at the moment). For cervical cancer, which is probably the best of the three for screening, you have to screen 1000 women for 35 years to prevent one death. You think about the extra cost, extra tests and all the pain and anxiety of all the people who get false positive results.
Screening is like wearing an elastic seatbelt. It gives you illusion of security, when in fact it gives you no real protection, and just adds inconvenience. Unlike an elastic seatbelt, there is no 'real' substitute. yet.
Just to make it more difficult, their is an entire industry set up around producing and promoting these 'elastic seatbelts'.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Why? Because the girl's life is somehow more valuable than the alcoholic's? Because the alcoholic is somehow more deserving of his fate than the girl? Because she deserves the liver more? I don't think I'm qualified to make decisions about whose life is more worth saving, or whose is in some sense more deserving of lifesaving treatment. There is an uncomfortable moral calculus about the distribution of scarce goods, and we might appeal to it in this case to say that it's more useful to give the liver to the patient with a better chance of surviving, that is, the girl, but that's what it should come down to.
Disease isn't a punishment for bad behaviour, and the role of medicine is do aid the suffering, not to pass judgment on their lifestyle.
That's a little hypocritical, now isn't it?
We constantly complain about the RIAA not being able to see the benefits of new audio and file-sharing technology, and only being pessimistic about it.
Why, when something like this can be used for good (i.e. early detection of cancer, and drunk drivers), must we prevent such a technology just because it can be used for privacy invasion?
We need to be on the watch for such wrong uses, but we need to allow the technology to be (as in existence) as well.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Absolutely the little girl deserves her liver transplant more.
The alky made CHOICES which led to his condition. The girl didnt.
From your post I would guess you think people who make bad choices should not be held accountable for them. Im not saying you are one, but that is the very root of modern liberalism.(Modern, not 50-60s era)