Have dogs been trained to sniff out cancer and predict seizures in humans?

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"Seizure-alert dogs, save lives". This is what the media would like the general public to believe, and while it makes for a great headline, it also makes for a grave misrepresentation of the truth.The truth is, seizure dogs can not be trained to “alert” a person of an oncoming seizure. Therefore, a seizure dog may be useful in assisting a person during or after a seizure, but is not guaranteed to be able to “alert” a person of an oncoming seizure. Seizure-alert dogs, as implied by their name, are dogs that can sense and notify their human companions of an oncoming seizure. This alerting behavior has been reported to occur several seconds to 45 minutes or more before the onset of the seizure. The dog does this by exhibiting marked changes in behavior, including close eye contact, circling, pawing, barking etc. According to Deborah Dalziel, research coordinator for a University of Florida Veterinary Medicine study on seizure alert dogs, “There is this misconception that any seizure dog can be trained to alert, which just isn’t true. A dog can cue in on minute behavioral differences, but can't be trained to alert”. She points out that there are no scientific studies to support the many theories on how dogs detect an oncoming seizure. "What we know on how dogs can alert to a seizure before it occurs is still a mystery. From a scientific standpoint, there is still so much that remains to be determined," said Dr. Basim Uthman, Associate Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at the University of Florida College of Medicine and Brain Institute. http://www.epilepsy.com/articles/ar_1084289240 Nov 06 09, 10:05 PM

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They seem to do well with certain types of cancers. Encountering breath samples captured in tubes, the dogs gave a positive identification of a cancer patient by sitting or lying down in front of a test station. By scent alone, the canines identified 55 lung and 31 breast cancer patients from those of 83 healthy humans. The results of the study showed that the dogs could detect breast cancer and lung cancer between 88 and 97 percent of the time. The high degree of accuracy persisted even after results were adjusted to take into account whether the lung cancer patients were currently smokers. "It did not seem to matter which dog it was or which stage cancer it was, in terms of our results," Broffman said. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer_2.html Nov 06 09, 11:02 PM

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