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Can Dogs Detect Cancer
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Should be interesting, watched a programme last year that somehow taught dogs to know when there owners where going to have an epileptic fit it was fasinating.
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It is fasinating when dogs do these things you can see how guide dogs and hearing dogs are trained its on reward and like a game but how do the dogs know when someones going to have a fit, there are no signs even the people having the fits dont know when there having them.
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didnt actually see the programme - but I did read an article a while back and aparently anything cancerous has a particular smell to a dog - and some dogs are able to detect this very early on. :thumbsup:kris said:
its a few years since i saw this i cant remember if it was a program dedicated to the subject or if it was a feature about it on a program about cancer.anyway it showed you the dog licking a particular patch on a womans leg and she had cancer.it was before it was diagnosed by the doctors too. :blink:
Gill Lacey is one of them. Trudi, his Dalmatian, smelled trouble 25 years ago.
"One particular day, I noticed when she walked past me, she came towards me, sniffing at my leg. And I thought I'd just spilled something," recalls Lacey. "But when I looked, she was sniffing at a tiny mole on my leg."
That mole turned out to be a malignant melanoma, a deadly form of cancer, if not discovered early. Doctors removed the mole and a mass of tissue around it, and when Lacey left the hospital a month later, Trudi confirmed that the cancer was gone.
"Although they'd already said to me that it was clear, I felt reassured that it really was," says Lacey, who believes Trudi saved his life. "I'm convinced of that."
There are an increasing number of similar stories. Time and again, dog owners in England and the United States report much the same behavior. But until very recently, the medical establishments in both countries mostly ignored or dismissed such anecdotes.
Before her involvement in the study, Willis, a research dermatologist, was one of the skeptics. "Anecdotal reports on their own really don't prove very much at all," she says. "They are quite useful indicators of perhaps something to look at. But on their own, they don't provide any sort of proof of any particular phenomenon."
But she became convinced, in large part, because of a simple medical fact -- diseases do give off odors, and dogs, at least theoretically, can smell them.
"Back in the sixth century, I think Hippocrates was describing fruity smells associated with people with diabetes. And musty smells associated with liver disease," says Willis.
If dogs can recognize such odors, the implications for medicine could be enormous. Those noses might provide early detection that science cannot yet achieve. For a disease like prostate cancer, for instance, current detection through blood tests can be notoriously inaccurate.
No one has been more obsessed with the possibilities than Dr. John Church, the driving force behind the British medical journal study. A retired orthopedic surgeon, he believed for a decade that dogs could detect cancer.
He says that there was an element of skepticism, but the patients who were recruited were all "tickled to death because this was something brand new."
But now, in the wake of his study, he feels vindicated. "This is a first step in the right direction. I would say it is a great breakthrough in the sense that this is the first such presentation of a rigorous study of this type," says Church. "We regard this as a great breakthrough."
And there are more studies on the way. In California, there's a test of dogs’ ability to detect lung cancer, and back in England, with the help of a cancer researcher at Cambridge, Broom and Somerville are finishing up their own study on prostate cancer.
Final results are expected this year, but early tests show very high success rates. Meanwhile, the Amersham team is planning to move ahead on further research -- with their handpicked roster of specialists, of course. The team includes Biddie and Tangle, Oak and Dill, Bee, and a couple of pre-med rookies, Briar and Daisy.
"I personally see a day when you could use dogs to detect disease," says Church. "You've got a marvelous asset. You've got a wonderful tool."
"One particular day, I noticed when she walked past me, she came towards me, sniffing at my leg. And I thought I'd just spilled something," recalls Lacey. "But when I looked, she was sniffing at a tiny mole on my leg."
That mole turned out to be a malignant melanoma, a deadly form of cancer, if not discovered early. Doctors removed the mole and a mass of tissue around it, and when Lacey left the hospital a month later, Trudi confirmed that the cancer was gone.
"Although they'd already said to me that it was clear, I felt reassured that it really was," says Lacey, who believes Trudi saved his life. "I'm convinced of that."
There are an increasing number of similar stories. Time and again, dog owners in England and the United States report much the same behavior. But until very recently, the medical establishments in both countries mostly ignored or dismissed such anecdotes.
Before her involvement in the study, Willis, a research dermatologist, was one of the skeptics. "Anecdotal reports on their own really don't prove very much at all," she says. "They are quite useful indicators of perhaps something to look at. But on their own, they don't provide any sort of proof of any particular phenomenon."
But she became convinced, in large part, because of a simple medical fact -- diseases do give off odors, and dogs, at least theoretically, can smell them.
"Back in the sixth century, I think Hippocrates was describing fruity smells associated with people with diabetes. And musty smells associated with liver disease," says Willis.
If dogs can recognize such odors, the implications for medicine could be enormous. Those noses might provide early detection that science cannot yet achieve. For a disease like prostate cancer, for instance, current detection through blood tests can be notoriously inaccurate.
No one has been more obsessed with the possibilities than Dr. John Church, the driving force behind the British medical journal study. A retired orthopedic surgeon, he believed for a decade that dogs could detect cancer.
He says that there was an element of skepticism, but the patients who were recruited were all "tickled to death because this was something brand new."
But now, in the wake of his study, he feels vindicated. "This is a first step in the right direction. I would say it is a great breakthrough in the sense that this is the first such presentation of a rigorous study of this type," says Church. "We regard this as a great breakthrough."
And there are more studies on the way. In California, there's a test of dogs’ ability to detect lung cancer, and back in England, with the help of a cancer researcher at Cambridge, Broom and Somerville are finishing up their own study on prostate cancer.
Final results are expected this year, but early tests show very high success rates. Meanwhile, the Amersham team is planning to move ahead on further research -- with their handpicked roster of specialists, of course. The team includes Biddie and Tangle, Oak and Dill, Bee, and a couple of pre-med rookies, Briar and Daisy.
"I personally see a day when you could use dogs to detect disease," says Church. "You've got a marvelous asset. You've got a wonderful tool."
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We watched this programme tonight, Evie never bothers with telly but tonight she sat on my knee and watched it all and looked really interested never took her eyes off the telly, it was really weird, wish i could have got to the camera to show you, there you go whippy are intelligent :lol:
Julie
Julie
digzoils said:I saw the program and am now very worried, judging by Jaspers behaviour every one i know must have bum cancer
Paul B
omg that is soo funny i nearly choked laughing.
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I missed it, but it is being repeated on Wednesday evening
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Well I must have too then ....... :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:natty said:digzoils said:I saw the program and am now very worried, judging by Jaspers behaviour every one i know must have bum cancer
Paul B
omg that is soo funny i nearly choked laughing.
