Maybe you should let dogs sniff your junk after all:
Researchers used two professionally trained dogs to test their ability to detect prostate cancer from a pool 677 people. One group of participants was cancer-free; the other group ranged from individuals with low-risk tumors to those whose cancer had metastasized to other tissues. The two dogs sniffed urine samples, and identified signs of prostate cancer with a combined 98 percent accuracy. In a few cases, the dogs identified cancer when it wasn’t there — called a false positive — accounting for the remaining 2 percent of cases. That success rate represents a vast improvement over the standard Prostate-Specific Antigen test, which has a false positive rate as high as 80 percent, Bloomberg reports.
But some specialists have their doubts:
A debate currently is raging over whether prostate cancer is overdetected and overtreated, given that most men develop the cancer late in their life and end up dying of other causes. Those who are treated for prostate tumors often suffer problems such as impotence and incontinence, leading some doctors to argue that it might be better to leave prostate tumors undetected.
“Screening for prostate cancer is a very controversial area, and while I would like to think dogs could solve that problem, I don’t think that’s a possibility,” [Charles] Ryan said. “That said, it’s fascinating to think as a scientist these things are out there and actually exist.”
The Dish 