It’s early yet. No doubt it would take years of massive studies before anyone in the healthcare industry would admit creation’s superiority over man-made technologies. And considering what’s at stake for those already invested in this discipline, it’s possible that we’ll never hear much more about it. After all, the BBC reported on this amazing canine capability over three years ago, and the corporate media haven’t exactly been jumping up and down about it.
And so we wait. But in the meantime, I find statements like this very curious: “The technique is simple, non-invasive and cheap, and may revolutionise cancer detection in countries where mammograms are hard to come by.”
“In countries where mammograms are hard to come by”?
But according to the specialists at Susan G. Komen, mammography demonstrates a sensitivity of only about 84% for detecting breast cancer. And its specificity is relatively low; if you’re a woman who’s been faithfully following the experts’ recommendations for 10 years or more, your chances of experiencing a false-positive result is 50-60%. Which means that many obedient women end up experiencing unnecessary anxiety and follow-up testing over the course of their lives.
So if these phenomenal canine results are borne out, why wouldn’t you make 100% accurate doggie detection available everywhere, not just where mammograms are “hard to come by”?
I wonder, too, about our spending priorities.
These days, breast cancer research is a multi-billion-dollar industry; in the U.S. alone, the federal government’s National Cancer Institute spends far more investigating breast cancer than it does on any other form of the disease – even though colorectal, lung and pancreatic cancer each kill more Americans than breast cancer does. Why are we not putting that money into evaluating dogs’ utility for early detection and treatment monitoring for all kinds of cancer?
Could this emphasis on man-made technologies possibly be because only dog breeders and trainers stand to make money on canine detection?
Or because the cancer industry has already invested billions in equipment that would have to be chucked if dogs proved superior?
Or perhaps it’s because only God would get the glory for this remarkable canine-olfactory invention; and these days, only a minority of the “experts” even believe in Him.