“We have always suspected that man’s best friend has a special ability to sense when something is wrong with us, but the first experiment to verify that scientifically has demonstrated that dogs are able to smell cancer.
Experts say it is unlikely that pooches will become practical partners in cancer detection any time soon, but that the results of the study by English scientists are promising.
They showed that when urine from bladder cancer patients was set out among samples from healthy people or those with other diseases, the dogs — ordinary pets — were able to identify the cancer urine almost three times more often than would be expected by chance alone…
The idea that they may be able to smell cancer was first put forward in 1989 by two London dermatologists, who described the case of a woman asking for a mole to be cut out of her leg because her dog would constantly sniff at it, even through her trousers, but ignore all her other moles.
One day, the dog had tried to bite the mole off when the woman was wearing shorts.
It turned out she had malignant melanoma — a deadly form of skin cancer. But it was caught early enough to save her life.”
More here from CNN.