Aspirant - the cancer detecting dog

Dog's are well known for their powers of sniffing, guiding and licking themselves in places that would be rude if we humans tried to do the same thing.

And there are surely more than enough stories circulating on the Net about animal cruelty and just how much we use and abuse Man's Best Friend.

Here though is a tale of a dog, which according to the regional French daily La Nouvelle République has learnt a remarkable skill, and it's being put to good use.

Aspirant, a six-year-old Malinois, or Belgian shepherd dog, can detect patients with prostate cancer.

Aspirant (Screenshot from video accompanying La Nouvelle République report)

He's a military dog at the French airbase of Orléans-Bricy in central France and has undergone training to be able to detect signs of prostate cancer in urine samples.

It's all part of a programme of experiments conducted by Olivier Cussenot, the director of the research unit of urology at the Tenon hospital in Paris, who was put in contact with the airbase in 2007 because, as ministry of defence veterinarian Philippe Ulmer told the paper, "We have dogs capable of detecting all sorts of products such as drugs and explosives.

Over a period of months Aspirant, with the help of his handler, was taught to tell the difference between urine samples which came from patients diagnosed with prostate cancer and those without, always, stressed Ulmer, with the sense that, "Aspirant thought it was a game and when he correctly identified a 'positive' sample he would be rewarded."

And the training seemed to work - far beyond the expectations of many, according to Ulmer.

"One day we were surprised when he indicated that a negative sample was apparently positive," he said.

"It was then sent off to Paris for analysis and the tests came back proving that the dog had been right; the patient had indeed developed prostate cancer."

Journalists, including Bruno Besson from the paper, were treated to their own demonstration of Aspirant's ability last Friday when they were invited to see him in action at the airbase.

"Three samples were hidden in the drawers of three different tables," writes Besson.

"One of them was 'positive' and the other two 'negative'," he continues.

"Aspirant entered the room, sniffed the first table and then went to the second where he immediately sat down and didn't move. He was right!"

Aspirant might be unique in France, but there are reports of "canine cancer detection" (Wikipedia's catchy little title for the screening which it defines as relying "upon the olfactory ability of dogs to detect very low concentrations of the alkanes and aromatic compounds generated by tumors") in other countries.

In 2006 The Pine Street Foundation in Marin County, California published the findings of a study it had carried out claiming that it had trained dogs "to detect lung cancer in the breath of cancer sufferers with 99 percent accuracy."

And in 2004 the British Medical Journal published a paper outlining the results of a test to determine "whether dogs can be trained to identify people with bladder cancer on the basis of urine odour more successfully than would be expected by chance alone."

French bride requests annulment moments after marriage

"I do" and then "I don't" barely 10 minutes later was very much the pattern of events for a newly-wed bride in France last weekend.

The wedding and almost immediate request for an annulment happened in the city of Tours in central France.

The evidently not-so-happy couple, both aged 25, were married in a civil ceremony at the city hall in front of the deputy mayor, François Lafourcade.

Nothing untoward seemed to mark the short ceremony, according to a report carried in the regional newspaper, La Nouvelle République, and Lafourcade said that everything appeared to proceed as expected.

Perhaps he should have known better.

"I had the feeling that something wasn't quite right, but everything seemed normal with nothing really missing; there were flowers, the rings, and the witnesses," he told the newspaper.

"I just posed the required questions and the bride answered 'yes' in a somewhat irritated," he continued.

"Afterwards the couple and their families left the room and I stayed behind with a couple of officials and just as I was getting ready to leave the bride returned and asked me to annul the whole thing on the spot."

So what had happened in such a short space of time to make the one half of the barely-wed couple change her mind?

Well according to some people present interviewed by the newspaper, once the families had made their way outside the building, the two mothers-in-law started arguing (no jokes please) and the tone escalated to such an extent that the police were called.

It was then that the young woman returned to deputy mayor to make her request, but was informed that she would have to make an official application to the public prosecutor if she really wanted the marriage to be annulled.

But there is perhaps more to the story than has appeared so far, as the journalist, Paul Wermus explained after digging a little deeper into what had happened for Laurent Ruquier, the host of an afternoon programme on national radio.

"The woman comes from the suburbs of Paris and the man is originally from Tunisia," said Wermus.

"All the signs are that it might have been an arranged marriage and the wife wasn't necessarily getting married of her own free will," he continued.

"The case is now with the public prosecutors office to determine whether there is in fact a case for annulment."

One of the grounds given in the French civil code for allowing a marriage to be declared invalid is if it can be proven that the "contract was entered into without the free consent of both spouses."