What fantastic news!
Japanese scientists have trained a black Labrador Retriever, named Marine, to sniff out colorectal cancer with up to 98% accuracy.
In fact, her abilities are more accurate than some tests currently used to diagnose the cancer.
The fecal occult blood test, for example, only accurately predicts the cancer 10 percent of the time.
It may come as a surprise that a dog can actually smell cancer, but then again a dog’s sense of smell is up to 1 million times better than a human being’s.
Scientists trained Marine to sniff cups of exhaled breath then to sit down in front of the cup that contained the sample from the patient with cancer and was rewarded with a tennis ball if she was correct.
Sounds like a good training system! How can we get Teddy enrolled? Ha!
For real though, this is great news and sounds like dogs like Marine can help a lot of people diagnose their cancer effectively and inexpensively!
Also, training more dogs like this would be a great way to give dogs stuck in a shelter a purpose in their life!
Thoughts???
[Image via AP Images.]
