Slashdot Mirror
If Dogs Can Smell Cancer, Why Don't They Screen People? (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Scientific American report: Dogs can be trained to be cancer-sniffing wizards, using their sensitive noses to detect cancerous fumes wafting from diseased cells. This sniffing is noninvasive and could help diagnose countless people, which begs the question: If these pups are so olfactorily astute, why aren't they screening people for cancer right now? Here's the short answer: Dogs do well in engaging situations, such as helping law enforcement track scents or guiding search-and-rescue teams in disaster areas. But sniffing thousands of samples in which only a handful may be cancerous is challenging work with little positive reinforcement. Moreover, it takes time and energy to train these pups, who, despite extensive preparation, still might miss a diagnosis if they're having a bad day, experts told Live Science.
...something is being emanated into the air and can be detected by a man-made sensor.
The same can be said for drugs and we still use dogs for that.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
If dogs became mainstream at detecting cancers, there would be immediate palpable disruption to the present status quo. Schools that train doctors, radiologists and the whole associated ecosystem would be in peril.
Nice try but no. Under the best of circumstances dogs wouldn't be more than a cheap form of screening which would have to be confirmed by other more reliable methods of detection. Screening tests are useful but don't replace entire ecosystems of medicine. At most dogs can tell us that something is going on in the patient but they cannot provide much in the way of details.
Who in this industry, would support such a move? I do not see any.
My wife is a pathologist and she would happily support dogs being used to detect cancers if it were a practical and reliable approach. Nearly all doctors are more than happy to utilize any tool that will get better results for their patients. Your cynicism is misplaced.
The same can be said for drugs and we still use dogs for that.
That's because it is a hard problem to solve and dogs are exquisitely evolved to detect scents. Learning to replicate even a fraction of that functionality will take many years of hard work. And yes, top people are working on it.
The same can be said for drugs and we still use dogs for that.
But how much of that is just theater? Many "drug arrests" at airports are staged, with actors playing the criminals. The rationale is both training for the dogs and deterrence for would-be smugglers witnessing the "arrest".
A handheld scanner would take away the drama.
Bees are just as good as dogs at sniffing things, including drugs and explosives.
You train the hive ONCE, and they train each other after that.
Unlike dogs, they have much longer working rules. They don't need as much rest or reward.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/...
http://mentalfloss.com/article...
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Blind tests show that the dog mostly alerts on suspicion from the handler, rather than smelling anything.
And humans of course have almost as good of a nose as a dog. Dogs have a long snout because of the shape of their mouth. Dogs are good at tracking humans because they're close to the ground and don't have a social aversion to sniffing the ground. Humans do well at tracking if you get them to stick their face down there and do it.
If this is true, than something is being emanated into the air and can be detected by a man-made sensor.
This was my immediate reaction too. Note that your point was answered only by conspiratorial flames about drug-snifffing dogs.
There is no incentive for dogs to falsely detect cancer, so if some of them can smell it, let's find out what they're specifically reacting to and design a chip for it.
You think that, once a dog says that you have cancer, that's it? You don't need oncologists? You don't need radiologists? You don't need nurses?
The cancer dog sniffs you, wags his tail a certain way that means you have Leukemia, you take a Leukemia pill and that's it?
Have you had any experience with the medical profession at all?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
This sniffing is noninvasive and could help diagnose countless people, which begs the question:
It raises the question. It does not beg the question.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
...your point was answered only by conspiratorial flames about drug-snifffing dogs.
"Conspiratorial flames"? I was just pointing out that drug-sniffing dogs are still in use. The point I was trying to make is that just because something is being emanated doesn't mean you can just grab a sensor off the shelf.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
If dogs are cancer-smelling machines, then every single dog in my local dog park must have cancer of the ass.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Um, why would they be in peril? Their job is to cure cancer. If a new tool helps them find more cancers earlier, they'll have more cancers to cure (as opposed to cancers that aren't found until it's too late and kill people).
Dr: Please step right into this room full of adorable puppy dogs.
vs
Dr: Please step into this room FULL OF BEES.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Actually no. Skin and lung/throat/mouth cancers are perhaps the easiest to smell, but dogs have been shown capable of relyably detecting a wide range of other cancers as well, along with a wide range of other diseases with no obvious surface symptoms. Presumably anything that alters your body's chemistry has a fair chance of introducing telltale molecules into your sweat, breath, urine, etc. And cancer uses metabolic pathways not normally used by healthy cells (most produce energy in the cytoplasm rather than the mitochondria), which probably means unusual waste products dumped into the blood stream.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And humans of course have almost as good of a nose as a dog
Citation absolutely needed sir.
"Olfaction, the act or process of smelling, is a dog's primary special sense. A dog's sense of smell is said to be a thousand times more sensitive than that of humans. In fact, a dog has more than 220 million olfactory receptors in its nose, while humans have only 5 million"
That's a pretty wide disparity. My money is on a dog being better at the smellings.
You are just so wrong I don't know where to start. I've had hounds for close to two decades.
Have you ever guided a friend so you can grab a couple of french fries 3 blocks away in the curb? I had a beagle who would pull me on a different route to do just that. 3 french fries.
Have you ever smelled a rat in a tree 20 feet above you? I had a beagle who the first time he did that at 10pm at night I just thought was barking at the moon. Until I got the flashlight out and saw two beady eyes staring back at me I would not have believed it. After that I knew, and would get a pole to chase it out of the tree. That particular beagle I had was probably the best scent hound I'd had or fostered. He usually had a kill once a week be it a squirrel, possum, rabbit or rat.
Dogs have a long snout for extra receptors and hounds do this thing where they collect scent in their noses. Humans do not do this.
Hounds ears are extra long to funnel scent to their noses. Those ears are shaped like they are for a reason.
Not quite. I have two SAR (Search and Rescue) dogs, and they are able to able to smell things we just plain can't. One dog can cover a 40 acre plot of land and find every human within about a half hour. He's found a dozen people (live and dead), and in many cases, places where ground-pounders and police already cleared. Our other dog is a sent-specific trailing dog and will follow the scent that a human leave along a trail for miles.
In all cases, during training and live searches, the handler has no idea where the subjects are. There is no indication that they can follow -- they lead us.
So -- read up. Your tests are bull shit.
It doesn't "beg the question." Check your dictionary (despite the overwhelmingly incorrect use of that phrase.)
Doug Jensen