Breathalyzer That Detects Lung Cancer Early From a Single Breath Wins $100K Entrepreneurship Competition (mit.edu)

Lung cancer "breathalyzer," developed by a team of MIT and Harvard University students, has won $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. The breathalyzer connects to a smartphone and is able to detect lung cancer early from a single breath, reports MIT News. From the report: Astraeus Technologies has developed a postage-stamp-sized device, called the L CARD, that detects certain gases indicative of lung cancer. When someone blows onto the device, a connected mobile app turns a smartphone screen red if those gases are present and green if they aren't. "The L CARD reacts and sends instantaneous information to the physician that further attention is required," Joseph Azzarelli, an MIT PhD student in chemistry said while a ripple of excitement spread through the crowd. Lung cancer is the deadliest type of cancer in the United States, causing more deaths than breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined, according to the World Health Organization.

Comments

Re:Better idea

[GLMDesigns]

Yes. It's called freedom. Freedom also allows you to do what other people consider to be stupid or immoral. Like, oh, for instance:

drink
eat pork
eat beef
eat any animal
eat anything produced by an animal
have sex before marriage
have sex with someone of the same gender
marry someone outside of your religion
renounce your religion
have an abortion
take contraceptives
and many other things

If you have the right to abort a fetus you have the right to decide whether or not to consume tobacco, wear seat belts and every other aspect that ownership of ones body implies.

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the smoke doesn't affect anyone else. In most cases, it does.

False positives vs. false negatives

[tolleyl]

One of the problems with such devices is that they don't report the percentage of false positives. This is a much bigger problem than false negatives, since there are more people who are negative (don't have lung cancer) than positive (have lung cancer). It's generally considered very bad to tell someone that they have cancer and then later say "Sorry, but we made a mistake." Though that's good news for them, they get upset that you told them the false bad news first. However, early diagnosis of lung cancer is an important area and if they made progress toward that then I applaud them.

Re:False positives vs. false negatives

[Calibax]

A false positive is much less of a problem than a false negative. One can cause some loss of sleep, the other can result in a failure to get early treatment and subsequent death.

If a positive result if presented to the patient as an indication that they should have further tests then the level of anxiety generated by the result can be managed.

Re:False positives vs. false negatives

[uncqual]

A false positive can result in additional testing such as CT scans, PET scans, and/or biopsies which were unneeded and expose the patient to risks such as increased risk of actually getting cancer due to increased exposure to radiation or infection or other complications from surgery/anesthesia.