Joy Milne spent her professional life in the care of others as a nurse in a Nightingale ward. But her life took an unexpected turn when she began to notice that her husband, a consultant anaesthetist, began to smell distinctly differently to her. Twelve years later he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and during a visit to Parkinson’s UK she realised other patients had the same smell. She came to realise that somehow, she could smell Parkinson’s Disease in people and detect it far earlier than the NHS.

Eventually, she was put to the test by the University of Edinburgh and they confirmed what she knew all along. Joy could reliably detect the presence of Parkinson’s with her superhuman sense of smell. She was so good at detecting the condition that she was originally told she’d wrongly chosen one man from the control group without Parkinson’s. Eight months later and it was confirmed that sadly she was correct about her diagnosis. In the end, she had diagnosed Parkinson’s correctly in 100% of the cases she was tested on.

Today, Joy is working closely with the University of Manchester and Professor Perdita Barran to better understand Joy’s incredible abilities but more importantly seek to develop a superior diagnostic that doesn’t require Joy’s personal presence.

Joy’s talk

The Incredible Story of a Superhuman Nurse Who Discovered She Could Smell Parkinson’s Disease