Feb 2 2011Japan Trains Dogs To Sniff Out Butt Cancer

Whoa -- not the sausage, buddy!

Japanese scientists have successfully trained a Labrador Retriever to sniff out bowel cancer by whiffing a person's breath or doodies (and not actual buttcheeks like I'd have you believe) with the accuracy of a colonoscopy. Hmmmm -- doctor wedging things up my ass or letting a dog lick my face, tough call.

The findings, presented today in the Gut , a British Medical Journal publication, support hopes for an 'electronic nose' that could one day sniff a tumour at its earliest stages, the researchers say.

The team, led by Hideto Sonoda at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, used a specially-trained female black labrador to carry out 74 "sniff tests" over a period of several months.

It correctly spotted which samples were cancerous and which were not in 33 out of 36 breath tests, equal to 95 per cent accuracy, and in 37 out of 38 stool tests (98 per cent accuracy).

It performed especially well among people with early stage disease.

The scientists suggest training and keeping dogs at butt-doctors' offices is probably unrealistic, but that in the future a sensor could be created that mimics the dog's sense. Right, a sensor that mimics the complexity of a dog's nose -- I'm not holding my breath for that one. But for the squirty toot my dog just ripped? Absolutely.

Dogs sniff out cancer in stool [abc] (What the -- stools aren't comfortable for dogs! Get that bitch a La-Z-Boy!)

Thanks to rick, who once pulled a friend's finger and the dude actually shat. I'm not gonna lie, rick, sounds like it's time for some new friends. And to eileen m, whose dog doesn't go around sniffing butts BECAUSE SHE'S CLASSY.

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