Thursday, April 23, 2009

Dr Mickey?

How nosy mice sniff out sickness - health - 22 April 2009 - New Scientist

I didn't know that mice and rats had been shown to have some disease sniffing ability, like dogs have with cancer.

(There was a documentary on SBS recently about trials in England with cancer sniffing dogs. I was only able to half watch it, but the point of the story seemed to be that there was much professional scepticism about how useful this ability could be in real life, because dogs can have good days and bad days in smelling trials. My experience at the airport with a sniffer beagle that got very excited over a bottle of gin would appear to confirm that.)

Anyway, I hope one day to find a cage of rat assistants in my GP's surgery.

1 comment:

TimT said...

The sniffer beagle was probably asking for a bit of gin and tonic.