Dogs can sniff out cancer!

Yes they can. That's what a few years' worth of research has shown. Cos science relies so heavily on machines and their data analyses, scientists, doctors and cancer research foundations obviously raise their noses at such unbelievable notions based on mere anecdotal evidence.

However, generally when there is some anecdotal evidence, cancer research and other such foundations fund labs and researchers to find tangible evidence. In this case though, no such funding was forthcoming. So for more than a decade there's been only anecdotal evidence. But about 5/ 6 years ago (I think) a researcher published his findings that dogs can sniff out bladder cancer. Problem with the study? The dogs sniffed it out only something like 45% of the time. That's not good enough. However, the research was conducted to prove a principle - dogs can be trained to sniff out (at least some forms of) cancer.

Since then there's been other studies on dogs' ability to sniff out breast, prostate and lung cancer. The success rate has been astonishing. An article that was to be published in March this year in Integrative Cancer Therapies did this study: 5 household dogs were trained over 3 weeks to sniff out breast or lung cancer by sniffing breath tests of patients. The study found that dogs can sniff out breast or lung cancer with an accuracy level of 88-97%.

A tv prog called Can Dogs Smell Cancer? (SBS) shows a research team in California (I think) that leaves a breath test done on a lung cancer patient FIVE years ago (which was since then left in a non-airtight container in a garage all these years) with some breath tests of non-cancer patients and the trained dog sniffs it out!! Something no machine on earth can yet do!

A sceptical oncologist from the UK Cancer Council who was interviewed (on the same prog) said ONE BIG problem would be that patients would not trust and/or rely on a dog sniffing out cancer.

Considering that right now it's doctors who "sniff out" the cash cancer (in terms of suspecting something to be cancer or sth like that to order the relevant tests) why not dogs? Esp considering we use dogs to sniff things out in other life/death situtations in this terrorism-filled days? Besides, a lot of doctors today are people who seem to forget their oath and moral codes at will. For eg, when my grandma was really sick the doctors, after keeping her in hospital for over 2 weeks said they wanted to do a bone marrow exam on her. Based on what evidence? Well, cos they couldn't find anything wrong with the patient, but the patient was too weak to get out of bed or even open her eyes. So the doctor suspected a form of bone cancer (since my great-grandma might have had had it from the symptoms my uncle recalls). So my mom asks what the good doctor was planning - long term. Well, comes the answer, it's likely that if we find cancer, it'll be quite advanced now so we'll have to treat it with chemo. But considering the age of the patient (86), it's unlikely she'll survive chemo. Right. So again, WHY are we doing this test? Certainly not in the name of 'curing' the patient. At least, not in this particular case. This is only ONE of my personal experiences with doctors who use patients as their very own guinea pigs/ research projects. You don't want to hear the rest. Or the experiences of other people I know.

And anyways why should doctors/ researchers be so afraid of encouraging the use of dogs in early cancer detection? Isn't timing everything in cancer?!? And doctors will have their fair go anyway cos dogs only "detect" - they don't "cure" or "treat."

If I had to choose between trusting a dog or a doctor to detect the possibility of cancer in my body, give me a dog anytime! At least I know it's not thinking "what other tests can I order that'll bring in the $$?" and/or "how many more times can I ask this patient to come back to see ME, the expensive "specialist"?"