Dogs really are man's best friends

Reuters reports that dogs, when properly trained, might be able to sniff out cancer cells growing inside you long before the disease spreads beyond hope.

Dogs' keen sense of smell might help in the early diagnosis of cancer, researchers report in the current issue of Integrative Cancer Therapies. The findings show that trained ordinary household dogs can detect early-stage lung and breast cancers by merely sniffing the breath samples of patients.
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Researchers have observed that cancer cells release molecules different from those of their healthy counterparts, and that might be perceived by smell by the highly sensitive dog's nose.
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the dogs were able to correctly distinguish the breath samples of cancer patients from the those of the control subjects in about 90 percent of the cases [...] The dogs were also capable of detecting early-stage lung and breast cancers.

This study shows that there is hope for early detection of cancer cells' growth inside an individual, a possibility that could potentially allow us to detect and cure cancer at such early stages that death rates would certainly drop.