One day Nancy Best was napping on her sofa when her dog, Mia, suddenly jumped up on her. Then her dog began to “bury her nose” in the exact same spot on Nancy’s right breast (Cohen, CNN.com). Mia continued to do this for the next week. Mia began to use large amounts of force on Nancy, and Nancy noticed that their was a large lump on her breast. Soon Nancy went to the doctors, and her problem was uncovered. Stage II Breast Cancer.
In another case, a medical journal published another case when a dog was able to detect cancer. In 1989 a British medical journal, The Lancet , published a story that stated that a border collie-Doberman mix kept sniffing a mole on the owner’s thigh. Due to the dog pestering her leg, she decided to see a doctor. The doctor determined that she had malignant melanoma.
So is it just a coincidence that these dogs were able to detect cancer by using their smelling abilities? In 2004, the British Medical Journal published a study where dogs had to smell urine samples of a healthy and cancerous person. Because the study was published, it does not suffer from the file drawer problem. There were thirty-six dogs that were used in this experiment. The dogs only picked out the cancerous persons urine 41% of the time.
What do scientists that publish this study think the dogs smelled? Elizabeth Cohen, a contributor for CNN.com said that, “Some scientists theorize there are certain “biomarkers” in cancer that might be unique to cancer and smelly to a dog’s sensitive nose but undetectable to ours.”
Michael Broffman and Michael McCulloch, members of the Pine Street Foundation, researched if dogs could smell cancer. The Pine Street Foundation is a medical center outside of San Francisco. They took breath samples from breast/lung cancer patients and cancer-free people. Then, they trained the dogs. When the dogs detected cancer, they received a treat from the researchers. When the dogs detected the samples from the cancer-feee patients, they did not receive a treat. This training period took three weeks. The researchers then set four cancer-free and one cancer sample in a row. The dogs were able to complete this task with impressive accuracy. They were able to detect 88% accurately with the breast cancer samples and 99% with the lung cancer samples.
Elizabeth Cohen asked, “So is the point to eventually have a dog in every doctor’s office?” Michael Broffman and Michael McCulloch concluded that there is no point to having a dog in the doctor’s office, however scientists may be able to turn this into a technology into a more useful to detect different types of cancer.
There are many skeptics with this research experiment. Dr. Larry Myers, a veterinarian and dog trainer at Auburn University, says that there is no way that Broffman and McCulloch could have trained the dogs to detect cancer in just three weeks. Myers says that it takes thirteen weeks to just train a dog to smell explosives. Also, there is not a large enough sample size. Lastly, even though there may be a correlation, this does not mean it is a case of causation.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/02/06/cohen.dogcancerdetect/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97979
As a dog owner/lover, I can personally attest to the amazing things a dog can do. I’ve never heard of the theory that dogs can detect cancer, so this blog was particularly stimulating. If there’s one thing my dog is great at, it’s cheering me up. So I wonder, is there any science behind the idea that dogs can detect hman emotions? The University of London has completed a study in which they came to the conclusion that a dog is more likely to approach someone who is crying than someone who is humming or talking. Further, they’ve found that the dog acts more passive around someone crying, as if they sympathize with the person (there is no hard research to support this). Although there is no way to prove the empathy in canines, anyone who has had a moment in front of their dog can testify that their furry friend gave a shoulder to lean on.
Source: http://www.livescience.com/20823-canine-comfort-dogs-understand-emotion.html
This is pretty interesting but I just do not think that I would trust a dog with detecting cancer. The cases are so few and could have been due to chance. I also agree that training the dogs to smell cancer in just three weeks leaves me very skeptical.