Interview
on CNN's "American Morning"
Dogs Being Trained to Sniff Cancer in Humans
Aired May 29, 2003 - 07:44 ET
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: It's uncharted territory
for man's best friend, but at a California clinic dogs are being taught
to sniff out cancer. The 15-week program is designed to specially train
dogs to detect cancer in humans by smelling their breath.
Michael McCulloch is leading the scent-detection project at the Pine
Street Medical Center in San Anselmo. He joins us now from there this
morning, along with two of his prized puppies-in-training, who we can't
see quite yet.
Are they sitting on your lap? Oh, there they are. How sweet. This is
Ming and Ling, right?
MICHAEL McCULLOCH, PINE STREET FOUNDATION: That's
right.
COLLINS: Can you tell us a little bit...
McCULLOCH: Good morning, Heidi.
COLLINS: Good morning to you and your puppies there.
I'm wondering how you got interested in a project like this.
McCULLOCH: Well, we've often been asked the question:
Can dogs actually detect cancer? And what we're finding in our study
is how accurately can they do it? We're using a rigorously-designed double-
blind study to measure how accurately dogs can detect and distinguish
between the breath of a person with lung cancer and the breath of a person
who does not have cancer.
COLLINS: So, how do they go about doing that?
McCULLOCH: Well, it uses a very carefully designed
training method, where the dogs are trained to sample using their noses
a series of five different samples on the floor of the laboratory room.
And they are then trained to give a cue to basically sit down at the
breath sample that came from a person with lung cancer.
COLLINS: No, I have to ask...
McCULLOCH: And in the beginning, we...
COLLINS: I'm sorry, Michael, we're just looking at
some video of that process of the training, and I'm trying to figure
out in my mind how you get a hold of a person's breath and then put it
into some sort of container for them to later come and smell. How does
that work?
McCULLOCH: Oh, OK. It's very straightforward. Basically,
we use a tube like I'm holding here. And the person who is the research
subject would then breathe through the tube, and then this tube is then
presented to the dogs, and they then will smell the tube.
COLLINS: How long does it take to train a dog to do
such a thing?
McCULLOCH: Our estimates are anywhere between 6 to
12 weeks to train the dog, and we're right now in this test actually
testing different training designs to see how quickly and how efficiently
we can actually complete the training process.
COLLINS: Now, the puppies that you have with you this
morning, Ming and Ling, I know they're getting ready to -- or one of
them at least is getting ready to start this training. The other one
is already in it. But their cousin, Shing Ling (ph), was actually the
pioneer of this sort of work. Tell us a little bit about that dog.
McCULLOCH: That's right. Yes, Shing Ling was really
our pilot dog, the first dog that began this work with us. And in that
part of the project, we were able to determine that she could, 87 percent
of the time, reliably distinguish between the breath sample of a person
with lung cancer and the person who did not have cancer. So, in this
study, which is more rigorously designed, we're actually replicating
then that with a team of five dogs.
COLLINS: Well, that's a pretty high percentage, 87
percent. Does that give you encouragement that this is something that
could become used more commonly?
McCULLOCH: Well, we think that, you know, the concept
is very simple. If dogs can detect drugs, if dogs can detect bombs, we
feel that they can detect the minute traces of volatile organic chemicals
that are given off by lung cancer cells in a person's breath. And we
believe that this project is going in two directions in the future. First
is in parts of the world where there isn't a large medical budget we
believe that the dogs could be used as kind of a prescreening to help
determine which members of the population would most benefit from more
expensive high-tech testing. And the second is that we believe that the
future of this work is also in the development of a kind of breathalyzer,
a detector that will be able to detect those same volatile organic chemicals
that are given off by the cancer samples using a device.
COLLINS: All right, well, it is certainly a fascinating
project, and early detection, it sounds like, is what your true goal
would be here. Michael McCulloch, we appreciate you being with us this
morning so much to tell us all about this. And we do want to remind everybody,
just to be careful here, that while the technology may have the potential
of early detection, doctors at the American Cancer Society say that they
have not seen enough data to support recommending this as an actually
method for early detection or prevention of cancer. They just say that
more research needs to be done, and of course, you need to consult your
doctor on all of this.
To odder a video of this transcript, call (800)
CNN-NEWS or visit www.fdch.com.
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