Celebrity Fifteen to One winner donates prize to Medical Detection Dogs

Television presenter Kate Humble chose Medical Detection Dogs as the charity to receive her winnings following her victory in the Channel 4 quiz show, Celebrity Fifteen to One, presented by Adam Hills, last week.

“If dogs are able to detect cancer through the power of their incredible sense of smell – and all the research to date suggests they can – who are we to turn our noses up at it?” – Kate Humble

The Buckinghamshire-based charity uses the remarkable olfactory power of dogs to detect volatiles associated with human disease including cancer from urine samples.The £26,000 prize money will be used towards the prostate cancer announced on last week. Cancer detection dogs take six months to train and in training trials, the dogs have achieved rates of 93 per cent reliability at detecting cancer.

Kate Humble overcame her rivals Ken Livingstone, Meera Syal, Russell Kane, Vic Reeves, Rebecca Front, Milton Jones, Amanda Lamb, Ed Byrne, Natalie Cassidy, Una Foden, Jenny Jones, Isy Suttie and Dave Spikey to win the final on Friday night’s show.

“I am delighted to have won Celebrity Fifteen to One and even more thrilled to be able to donate my prize money to Medical Detection Dogs.They are an extraordinary charity, run by an inspirational team, and I’m very proud to be one of their ambassadors. As we have seen this week with the announcement of their prostate cancer trial – the first ever canine prostate cancer trial in the UK – they are embarking on some truly ground-breaking work in the fight against cancer.” – Kate Humble

Medical Detection Dogs was co-founded in 2008 by animal behaviourist Dr Claire Guest and orthopaedic surgeon, Dr John Church. Dr Claire Guest has worked with her team to produce scientific evidence to prove her long-held belief that dogs are capable of detecting odours associated with cancer volatiles.

“We are so incredibly grateful to receive this donation from Kate. Any donation big or small makes a huge difference to us, so £26,000 is a really significant contribution to our work. At present we are embarking on the world’s largest prostate cancer trial using dogs. We need to train nine dogs and this donation will help us so much.Once we have produced really strong, robust scientific evidence to show that dogs are capable of picking up the odours linked to cancer, we can begin to offer this life-saving service to the public. Put into practice, our work can improve rates of early cancer detection and help cut the number of people lost to cancer each year.” – Dr Claire Guest