It would appear so.The cancer sniffer

The British Medical Journal this week published the results of a study in which dogs - ordinary pets - were able to distinguish the urine of patients with bladder cancer from that of healthy people.
Doctors believe the animals detect the scent of the abnormal proteins present in the urine of the patients with cancer.
It’s thought that a dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times better than a human’s.
The idea that dogs may be able to smell cancer was first put forward in 1989 by two London dermatologists, who described the case of a woman asking for a mole to be cut out because her dog would constantly sniff at it, even through her pants, but ignore all her other moles.
One day, the dog, a female border collie-Doberman mix, tried to bite the mole off when the woman was wearing shorts.
The mole turned out to be malignant melanoma, caught early enough to save her life.
Here’s the recent news, as reported last week by the BBC.
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PROVIDENCE, RI, United States (UPI) — A drug given orally to treat HIV is also safe if used as vaginal gel and could prevent the sexual transmission of HIV, says a U.S. study.

Researchers at the Miriam Hospital and Brown Medical School found the microbicide vaginal gel tenofovir produced mild or no side effects in both HIV positive and HIV negative women. Tenofovir is the active ingredient in the anti-retroviral drug Viread.

The microbicides are designed to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and may be formulated as vaginal gels, foams, creams or suppositories.

‘The results of this study may change the way the research community looks at developing safe and effective microbicides,’ said lead author Dr. Kenneth H. Mayer, of Miriam Hospital in Providence. ‘Analyzing the compounds that already have been shown to be successful HIV treatment drugs, and evaluating them for their potential to prevent transmission of infection is an innovative approach that shows great promise.’

The findings are published in the Feb. 28 issue of the journal AIDS, currently available online.