Does a canine nose beat a state-of-the-art medical scanner costing millions?
The Pine Street Clinic stands on possibly the prettiest street in the nicest town in America. San Anselmo is just north of San Francisco in wealthy but “alternative” Marin county (where the Prince of Wales will be this weekend). People here are 1960s and 1970s counter- culture types grown successful. No surprise, then, that Pine Street is a “complementary” medicine centre. But work at the clinic is set to perplex and intrigue mainstream doctors the world over. A research paper — peer-reviewed by mainstream scientists and copper-bottomed by statisticians at the University of California, Berkeley — is to be published next year in a respected American medical journal. It suggests that the humble dog could bring about a revolution in the early diagnosis of cancer as well as embarrass the medical technology industry and the technology minded majority of the medical profession. The claim of the Pine Street Foundation, which runs the clinic, is this: that dogs, given as little as three weeks’
