Cancer Sniffer

A specially trained black labrador retriever, Marine, has been trained to sniff out cancer with stunning accuracy.

The nine-year-old female successfully identified people with bowel cancer more than nine times out of 10 after being given samples of their breath or feces to sniff. The discovery suggests that chemical compounds associated with specific cancers circulate in the body, opening up the prospect of developing tests for a range of cancers that could be applied even in the early stages of the disease.

Marine was trained at the St Sugar Cancer Sniffing Dog Training Centre in Chiba, Japan. She began in 2003 as a water-rescue dog – trained to save people from drowning by dragging them to the shore – but in 2005 was switched to cancer detection. Over four years she learnt to distinguish the smell of a dozen different cancers including breast, stomach, prostate, bladder and skin cancer.

In a study published this year in the medical journal Gut, Marine completed 74 tests in which she was given five breath or stool samples from patients to smell. In each test, only one of the five samples placed in front of her was cancerous. When she smelled a cancer sample, she would sit, alerting her handler.

According to the study, when Marine was smelling breath samples, she was 95 percent as accurate as a colonoscopy in detecting cancer. With stool samples she correctly identified 98 percent of samples with cancer.

If the odor is identified, they say that it could lead to the development of new methods for early detection of colorectal cancer, the most common form.

Humor Me

My good friend sent me this humorous story for pet owners:



A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest.

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away."

The distressed woman wailed, "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am sure. Your duck is dead," replied the vet.

"How can you be so sure?" she protested. "I mean you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room.

He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head.

The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room.

A few minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck."

The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman.

The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she cried, "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead!"

The vet shrugged, "I'm sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it's now $150."