Recent comments in /f/askscience

PerspectivePure2169 t1_j55gfla wrote

Reply to comment by PsyFiFungi in Do beavers get splinters in their mouths, and if they do, how do they deal with them? by OldManIrv

They were a fad for small farms for a while in the 90s. Everyone was going to get rich selling ostrich meat, it was healthier than beef yada yada. Fertilized eggs were selling for ridiculous prices.

And now? Nothing.

The fad has moved on to alpacas now. Everyone is going to get rich selling that alpaca wool.

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bobbi21 t1_j55c1gj wrote

Reply to comment by freddythedinosaur1 in What color are cancer cells? by jennlara

Physician here. As others have said, Usually through scans and different tools but visually, youre right, its often a "lump" the architecture of tumours are almost always off from normal tissue. Its just rapidly dividing cells going any which way so more often its just a lump. There is often tumour spreading away from that lump too which is harder to see so they cant just go by that of course.

A common skin cancer is melanoma, and those are made specifically from the pigment producing cells in the skin, so they would be hyper pigmented and often dark. Squamous cell and basal cell skin cancers can be any colour really.

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Bag-Weary t1_j55a9ne wrote

Reply to comment by freddythedinosaur1 in What color are cancer cells? by jennlara

Surgeons are guided by imaging devices like PET, CT and MRI scanners. You can use contrast agents to show areas of greater glucose metabolism, for instance, as cancer cells use energy faster than others for respiration and blood vessel construction, and draw a contour around that to be used in surgery and radiotherapy.

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random_user285739 t1_j559odc wrote

Reply to What color are cancer cells? by jennlara

As a pathologist: “blue is bad”. We use stains when looking at the cells under the microscope and essentially comes down to blue and pink (hematoxylin and eosin). Pink stains the cells cytoplasm and blue stains nucleic acids/nucleus. Usually cancer cells have a larger nucleus compared to the rest of the cell and making the tumor appear more blue.

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dafaceofme t1_j557cka wrote

Reply to comment by freddythedinosaur1 in What color are cancer cells? by jennlara

not a surgeon/medical provider

From what I've heard, a tumor looks/feels different from normal tissue. Dr. Sandra Lee (aka Dr Pimple Popper) has a few videos on lipomas (a non-cancerous tumor) and I believe at least one has an explanation.

I don't know the answer to your question regarding skin cancers, with the exception of melanoma, which is a cancer of the pigment-producing cells in your skin. This makes it very easy to differentiate on lighter-skinned folks as it is physically darker than the surrounding normal skin.

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