Study cancer prevention in pet animals

There have been several huge and expensive studies published lately which showed that plausible interventions (eg: vitamins, lowfat diet) failed to change cancer incidence in humans. One explanation is that these things do not work. Another is that people are hard to study because they tend to do all sorts of things and you cant make them stop. For example, people in the control group in the lowfat study might have started eating lowfat diets by themselves. People who were supposed to be on the lowfat diet might have eaten a bunch of fat. People might not have eaten their vitamins, or eaten them when they were not supposed to, or had their food supplemented with vitamins by their governments when they were not watching.

I was thinking that one could study cancer prevention in prisoners. But a lot of people do not stay in prison for long, and there are ethical concerns with studying prisoners. Not good.

But what about pets? They lead supervised and controlled lives, except for my neighbor's dog. Cancer is a leading cause of death for pet dogs and cats. Animal lifespans are shorter than people and so cancer events will be more concentrated in a given time period. Animal diets are more straightforward than those of people. Their owners are often more motivated to care for the pets than they are for themselves. Plus there are a lot of pets, thus distributing the costs of housing and caring for them and also introducing random elements of environment similar to those that humans encounter.

I propose that pet animals be used for large cancer prevention studies. Initial studies could focus on breeds with high cancer rates - such as goldens or boxers. These breeds have enthusiasts dedicated to them who would likely be glad to help with the study. Studies could be lowfat vs highfat diets, comparisons of vitamin mixes, and so on. Eventually, cancer prevention might be a side project regularly involving breed enthusiasts such that when one study meets accrual goals the next will open.