Monday, November 07, 2005

Cancer and Dogs


Recent research has shown, yes with scientifically provable results, that dogs are able to detect cancer long before any equipment is able to.

The approach is non-intrusive, using urine samples from patients which are given to trained dogs for evaluation.

The level of accuracy from dogs is over 92%, while that of current equipment is lower being in the high sixties and can only detect cancer in the later stages.

Using dogs for this work is no different than the thousands of trained dogs currently being used worldwide for catastrophies, drug sniffing, police, military work and so on.

The most rigorous research has been conducted over many years at Cambridge in England, a University in Florida and a clinic in California. The research is ongoing in all three places.

Now here's the interesting if sad bit.

When officials at the major UK cancer research institute were asked what they thought about these results here are their comments:

That's interesting.
It is difficult to train dogs.
The dogs could not work as hard as machines.
The results would not be as accurate
It's interesting but a long way off from practical use.
Technology is moving fast and devices will be able to do this work in the future.

Huh?

Apart from the NIH (Not Invented Here) attitude, notice that there is no excited interest just damning with faint praise.

Could it be that narrow self-interest is more important to these people than what could be brought to cancer sufferers?

They take their karma.

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