Sniffing out cancer.

• Position: Usage of dogs to detect lung cancer - Brief article

A clinic in California claims that it has trained five dogs to detect lung cancer in patients' breath samples with 99 percent accuracy. The Pine Street Foundation in San Anselmo borrowed the dogs from their owners and Guide Dogs for the Blind and trained them like bomb-sniffing dogs: The canines would get a treat whenever they found the desired smell. Then, breath samples taken from cancer patients and healthy people were placed in plastic containers and presented to the dogs. If a dog smelled cancer, it would sit. The dogs sat correctly 564 times and did not sit 10 times for breath from cancer patients. For samples from healthy people, they did not sit 708...