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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.
I wonder if it can detect cancer with other, err, bodily gas flows...
The key word here is "early". Apparently the device can detect lung cancer early on. The earlier you know sb has cancer, the better you can treat them.
it will cost $10,000.00 to breathe into it. They do that, you know. And insurance will not cover it. They do that, you know.
There was a typo in the original post, the word "detect" was missing. It's been fixed since.
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.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
and any other doc-in-a-box.
I see.
As long as the smoke doesn't affect anyone else. In most cases, it does.
And this, in a nutshell, spells out the argument between pro-choice and pro-life. At what point does the fetus have a right to life?
Some say conception. Some say birth. Some say some point in between that. Roe v Wade said 3 months.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Officer: You just blew twice the legal limit, your life is probably ruined now. oh, and btw.. you also have lung cancer.
It would be a poor UX designer who only used color to indicate something like this. Maybe the phrase: "See a Doctor" if it's bad or "Everything's OK" if you passed.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Because banning addictive substances works 100% of the time with 0 adverse effects.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
...discussed at length here:
http://www.nature.com/articles...
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.
Sounds like the thing just gives a binary yes/no reading. So why bother with the NFC and phone? Why not just have a red/green LED on the device itself?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
The key question is: how early? Is it 'early enough'?
If it's early enough often enough they deserve a lot more than a measly 100K.
Lung cancer is almost always deadly.
If I understand correctly what I'm reading about the biomarker gasses, it's not just the absence or presence of a gas or gasses, but the quantities, and the profile of those quantities in normal vs. diseased lungs. So, they're hooking it up to a pattern classifier. In the prototype stage you need a computer with a fair amount of power --- fortunately these days a smart phone will do. Down the road I imagine they could hook it up to a FPGA or six and eventually engineer it down to one chip, but that's a lot more engineering and likely years down the road.
Finding God in a Dog
Actually... since the tech behind it is based on these sensors and since dogs can already be trained to detect bacteria and prostate cancer by smell, while bladder cancer can be detected by smell as well...
The answer is probably yes.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Cigarette smoke is not the only cause of lung cancer.
Though "medical media" people repeat this, it's not true as a general rule. On thing that came out of the Obamacare debates, when people spent a lot of time comparing the US health care system (which is very test heavy) to others throughout the world (particularly in Europe), is that for many cancers the fact that you survive longer after a cancer is detected is purely a statistical artifact of the early detection. For example, let's say you have a cancer that will kill you in five years. Dr A has a test that will detect it in one year. Dr B has a test that will detect it in three years. Further, let's suppose Dr A and Dr B treat you with snake oil, and that after five years you succumb to the cancer. Dr A claims his treatment allowed you to live twice as long as Dr B's, even though the early detection had no effect whatsoever on the course of the disease.
I think the situation has changed in recent years with new treatment options, but the medical establishment pushed mammograms for decades in pursuit of early detection when it made no statistical difference whatsoever to patient longevity.
Most of these newsworthy testing breakthroughs turn out to be useless because they produce too many false positives. In the near term this test really only moves the ball forward if that turns out not to be the case and also we have effective treatments we can employ between the new detection threshold and the old one.
Now if the police really want to save lives (and not just revenue raise) they will incorporate this into random breath tests (RBT's)
Ban alcohol, non-marital sex and undesirable thoughts at the same time! That has the same excellent justification as your demand.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Because banning addictive substances works 100% of the time with 0 adverse effects.*
* (Actual real-world observations may differ.)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I had a colonoscopy when I turned 50. It discovered a stage 3 adenocarcinoma in the ascending colon. Without a colonoscopy these are generally not found until the colon is blocked or it ruptures - either way the cancer has usually metastasized by this point and the live expectancy is of the order of 18 months to two years.
The day after the colonoscopy a cat scan confirmed the result (not that there was a doubt) and a week later the tumor was removed. The surgery was followed by 6 months of chemotherapy. That was 12 years ago.
A colonoscopy saved my life. It might save yours also. Man up and get it taken care of.
Cigarettes are not the only cause of lung cancer. Lung cancer existed before cigarettes, and will exist even if we ban them. Offhand I can think of a half dozen celebrities and people I know who never smoked but died of lung cancer.
Anything that can damage your DNA can cause cancer - radiation, various kinds of chemicals, viruses, or just errors in replication. All these things can cause cancer in the lungs. While it's true tobacco drastically increases your odds of lung cancer, you still have about a 14/1000 chance of developing lung cancer even if you've never smoked a cigarette and aren't exposed to statistically significant amounts of secondhand smoke, i.e. you don't live with a smoker or tend bar at a smoke-filled pub.
So yes, you need early detection.
This. A colonoscopy has a bigger statistical impact on your longevity than any other screening test.
I'm a scientist and have worked in the sensor field for a long time. I have had students I've trained attempt this (commercial breath detection of cancer) with promising initial results. It's pretty easy to do the demo these guys are doing. It's very hard to do this with real people. The gap between cool academic demo and manufactured product is huge. The gap between product and FDA cleared diagnostic is even larger.
How about a dog?
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/190633.php
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
And now we just need a toilet that can detect colon, stomach and prostate cancer and we're good to go.
Nobody should be dictating what an adult is allowed to willingly put in his or her body.
When said willful self-damage causes increased rates of death and illness, which has to be treated by tax-funded services, it is only right for the tax payers to have some say in the matter.
I'm not saying an outright ban is the solution, because it absolutely isn't, but the taxes on self-damage products such as tobacco and alcohol should match or slightly exceed the increased burden placed on public services as a consequence of their use. That plus smoking bans inside workplaces and other places like public buildings, plus information campaigns will not work as an outright ban, but it will help. Enforced plain packaging like in Australia is another good idea, I just wish it could be applied to all products and marketing in general.
And before the smokers get to whine about how "oppressed" they are, they can start by picking up every single goddamn cigarette butt they just throw wherever, out of car windows and on the streets.
Eat the rich.
Theranos needs to start over by hiring these students.
The moment that fetus decides to stop being a parasite on someone else it can have its right to stay alive.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Wouldn't it be earilier if they just detected the smoke instead?
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
There's a difference between allowing them to destroy themselves, and selling the means to do so at every gas station and grocery in the country.
What? You thought it really cost $10.00 to manufacture a pack of cigarettes? $20.00 to distill a bottle of vodka? Or did you think these things were hard to get before the government began regulating their manufacture, distribution and sale?
Someone already made the "21 years" joke.
You're probably thinking of second-hand toxin.
I'm thinking of America's for-profit healthcare system combined with "we demand you give him the best" snowflakes. THAT affects others more than a bit of odor at the bus station.
Wow! That was good. I laughed at that reply. Kudos to you and thanks for the chuckle.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.