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Study Shows Dogs Can Sniff Out Lung Cancer
cylonlover writes "Last year, researchers developed a cancer-detecting electronic nose inspired by dogs' ability to sniff out different types of ovarian cancer. Now a new study has found that sniffer dogs' abilities extend to reliably detecting lung cancer. The researchers say the results of the study (abstract) confirm that there is a stable marker for lung cancer, which offers the possibility that a 'breath test' for the early detection of lung cancer could be developed."
Do I have lung cancer in my crotch ??
I wonder how many dogs out there are sitting around mumbling, "I've been trying to get her to go to the doctor for 10 years!"
You mean that device that McCoy waves over people before he says they're dead Jim is an electronic nose?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Will it work for colon cancer? (YUCK! Fart analyzer)
If your breath smells like an ashtray I'm pretty sure you got cancer.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
One of my dogs has, over the past six years, demonstrated an absolute 100% track record in sniffing out whether women are pregnant. He's never given a single false positive, or a false negative. It's not something I've trained, he does it on his own. And to make it even more impressive, at the point when he gave the earliest signal on one woman, we later found out (through the doctor's ultrasound and dates) that it was just three days after conception. As for cancer, they've been known to accurately sniff it out for years now.
The canine nose is an amazing thing. But that's not the entire story, the amount of their brain that they dedicate to processing smell is huge compared to humans. In terms of the percentage of brain dedicated, they use something like 10-30 times more of their brain for smelling than we do. Smell is, quite literally, their primary sense, in the same way that sight is ours. The saying that "Dogs don't smell a cake, they smell each ingredient" is, quite literally, correct. In using dogs for scent detection, the biggest challenge is usually just our ability to isolate the desired scent to present to the dog, doing the rest is easy for the dog.
The real oddity here is not that dogs have good noses... a ton of animals do. Humans are actually the oddity. There seems to be a negative correlation between intelligence and smelling ability, perhaps because having lots of rational thought takes enough brain space that smelling gets pushed aside. Whatever the reason, looking at primates, as you go up in intelligence, smelling ability goes downhill. We shouldn't be so amazed that dogs can do what they do, but saddened that we can't do the same.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
If dogs can sniff out cancer, than that means that certain cells have a "scent," otherwise the dogs are probably just smelling cigarette smoke. But say they can "smell" certain cells and differentiate them from others. Well, there is a lot more research to be done there...can they sniff out heart-attacks before they happen, by smelling someone's breath and determining their risk factor? Can they sniff out diseases and prevent epidemics by someone's breath? Smell may in fact be the key to the next-generation of preventative medicine and curing illnesses before they take hold.
...so it's not like they're all powerful.
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....Oscar the Cat is still sniffing out dying people.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/02/us-cat-death-idUSTRE6115QB20100202
Sniffing out cancer in the breath of someone who has lung cancer does not surprise me.
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BMO
Let me understand this. Not knowing if I have Cancer; or a dog sticking its nose up my crotch. WAIT! I'm thinking.
Now if we can teach them to sniff out stupid and criminally inclined, we can run all our politician through and subsequently assign them tasks according to their level of reliability. With this technology we could have put George Bush Jr. in charge of the White House garden, and Dick Cheney in charge of the White House laundry (no you don't need Haliburton to get clean white sheets!)
I've also seen multiple reports of dogs detecting early-stage malignant melanomas (virulent skin cancer) on their owners.
The person finds the dog is suddenly licking a particular spot on their arm or leg. They go to the doctor and find themselves being sent to surgery ASAP.
Also, not quite colon cancer, but there have been successful tests on the detection of bladder cancer by a dog sniffing urine samples. I hope they give that doggie some extra treats.
It sounds like the breath test already exists. How hard is it to train these dogs?
:x
My dog can give you lung cancer if you sniff him out.
Now that this has been confirmed, the trolls will file patents for dogs, and we all will be screwed.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
why not just use highly trained dogs? They're far more accurate. and far cheaper.
A box of milk bones is cheaper than a $900 test for my insurance company.
They're using their grammar skills there.
There's a cat that seems to be able to tell when people are about to die
would occasionally bark and paw at her side, we'd laugh, crazy dog. But then she started having pain in the same area. About a year and a half later, she was diagnosed with lung cancer (she never smoked). The schnauzer died of leukemia before she passed away. I miss them both horribly.
In recent years, skin diseases in dogs and cats occupy a leading place among the diseases that occur in these species
Sorry about your loss, but maybe you shouldn't have given him chocolate - it's very toxic to dogs, along with onions, grapes and raisins.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I am glad I have dogs that will let me know if i have cancer...now if i can just get them to sniff out my buried treasure which i forgot the location...