Dogs sniffing out cancer?? absolutely amazing!

I just saw a news story about the study of dogs being able to detect cancer..

It began with a lady who had a mole on her leg, and she noticed her dog was paying a lot of attention to it. Sniffing it all the time and kind of licking/nibbling at it... She went to the doctor and discovered that it was cancer and had to be operated on.
Same thing with a lady who had breast cancer. Her dog was paying a lot of attention to the upper part of her right breast, and she said that the persistancy of the dog over a few days made her go to the doctor, and it saved her life...

They did studies with 8 urine samples laid out on the ground, where 7 were from healthy patients, and 1 was from a person with Bladder cancer. And the dogs would sniff out and signal to that sample every single time...

Also during their studies, they had this tour of doctors come through to watch, and during the study one of the trained dogs actually ran up to one of the doctors on the tour, and did it's signal for cancer on that person... It turned out that person had been diagnosed with cancer just previous to that..

Truely amazing... Dogs are so amazing and that is just beyond anything that I would have thought they were capable of.

Some pioneering doctors in this area who have trained dogs, can now have them detect the cancer of a patient just by their breath... 8 Breath samples were taken from healthy paitences and an untreated cancer paitent, and the dogs detected the breath sample that was from a cancer patient between 83 and 97 % accurate..... They were even able to detect the cancer sample from a breath that was taken 5 years ago...

I think it's just brilliant... Anyway I did a google search and here are a few links. I havn't looked at them all yet, but it'll give you a bit of an idea of how amazing these studies and dogs are..

Dogs Sniff Out Cancer

BBC NEWS | Health | Dogs 'sniff out' bladder cancer

Dogs in Training to Sniff Out Cancer

Can dogs smell cancer?

Dogs Sniff out Cancer — Sciencebase Science Blog

They shove their nose straight up ya clacker given half the chance too.

A family friend has epilepsy and there dog used to be able to know when he was going to have a fit. Too bad the dog got run over by a car, probably saved his life a few times :)

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Originally Posted by Andre

They shove their nose straight up ya clacker given half the chance too.

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I wouldn't lay around nude with a dogs nose on the prowel that's for sure... I'm with you on that one..

I'm guessing you watched 60 minutes tonight? It is incredibly amazing, watching it right now.

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Originally Posted by Salty

I'm guessing you watched 60 minutes tonight? It is incredibly amazing, watching it right now.

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Yeah I usually hate those 60 minutes/ Today Tonight shows but my girlfriend had it on and it was pretty amazing... In a way it makes sense though, but hopefully that can find a really practical use for it and actually accept it as a viable way to help diagnose it... Obviously it won't take off hugely, but anything that can help detect cancer shouldn't be ignored...

I don't mind watching 60 mins, usually a lot better than today tonight and had informative stories with a lot less bias. But defently, who would have known someone's breath could be used to identify cancer?