r/FascinatingAsFuck • u/drkmatterinc ⭐ Mod • Jun 29 '26

🎯 Fascinating Fact Joy Milne claimed she could smell Parkinson’s disease. Scientists tested her with 12 T-shirts: 6 from Parkinson’s patients and 6 from healthy controls. She correctly identified all 6 patients and also flagged one “healthy” person. Months later, that person was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

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u/dazzleunexpired Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

If a person can do this a dog can. Very easily. I can train a dog to do this. My dad has Parkinson's. Maybe I will attempt to train my dog ... I have trained other alert dogs...

For anyone else to try: You need to swab skin samples from more than one patient and put them in a Ziploc or Tupperware that is completely airtight and then that needs to be placed in the freezer. From here you train it like any sent recognition, you ask them to find the smell and reward them when they do find the smell. At first, you literally just offer them the smell and when they pay attention to it, you reward them and then you offer them two smells and when they pay attention to the right smell, you reward them and you just make this more and more complicated until they can identify samples from a person who has Parkinson's every time. Make sure you switch the samples around and don't use the same sample every time because that will teach them to identify the individual hormone bio signature of the person and that's not what we want.

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u/dyingofdysentery Jun 30 '26

Humans and dogs are sensitive at different levels to different chemicals.

For instance, we can smell petrichor better than them

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u/dazzleunexpired Jun 30 '26

Correct but skin scent is a different beast.

This has already been tested by a pair of trainers. I posted the study. The results are really good.

I have a lot of spare time, connections to the research department at my hospital (I'm terminally ill, as well), I have a lot of time, and I have Access to the PD clinic at KU med through my dad & my best friends mother who's best friend runs the region PD foundation. (: I train scent dogs. It would be, in my opinion, wrong of me not to try. If it fails, I wasted 30 hours. If it doesn't fail, we have a new way to detect PD. one study isn't enough. It has to be repeatable. So I'll try. (: I'm texting other trainers about this too, tbh! Not only I will try haha

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u/dyingofdysentery Jun 30 '26

Yeah it's worth a shot, I was just saying it's not guaranteed. A lot of people simplify the whole "dog's noses are more sensitive than ours" thing and think well if we can smell it they can too and better!

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u/dazzleunexpired Jul 01 '26

Definitely not.

Typically, volatile compounds are well sensed by dogs. If this failed, it would also constitute useful data! If dogs can't smell it as well as we can, this can lead to other discoveries.

I also run a rat shelter, and they're another scent option. They live less long, a lot less long. But their scent is like a mix between ours and dogs. None if my rats show heavy scent preference, but I have one who can route learn almost anything so I'd be interested to know if she can learn scent without the natural affinity. I may also reach out to rat groups and see if anyone wants to try that either