Need help debunking: Cancer has a bad odor?

jli said:
Even large cancers don't always have a smell comparable to rotting meat. Not even if they do have extensive necrosis (in my experience). And the size that a "psychic surgeon" handles is small enough to be palmed by him (this is a close up setting) is not what would be considered a large cancer which would be prone to extensive necrosis. I think you could make a good case with your friend, that what the book describes is in all probability not cancer.
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Are you a smoker? Just curious since smokers lose their sense of smell and it doesn't come back for a couple years after quitting.

However, I agree that not all cancers smell, but many of them do and often the patient also complains about the odor.
 
My cat years ago started to smell really bad as she was nearing death.

That's pretty much all I have to contribute to this conversation.
 
jli said:
Even large cancers don't always have a smell comparable to rotting meat. Not even if they do have extensive necrosis (in my experience). And the size that a "psychic surgeon" handles is small enough to be palmed by him (this is a close up setting) is not what would be considered a large cancer which would be prone to extensive necrosis. I think you could make a good case with your friend, that what the book describes is in all probability not cancer.
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Thanks, jli. You seem to have extensive experience with this and I don't doubt you. Or Skeptic Ginger.

The consensus seems to be that usually there is no odor but sometimes, even if rarely, there is. That being the case, and the fact that there is some ambiguity to it, I will probably have to ditch this idea.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Are you a smoker? Just curious since smokers lose their sense of smell and it doesn't come back for a couple years after quitting.

However, I agree that not all cancers smell, but many of them do and often the patient also complains about the odor.
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I am (and has always been) a non-smoker. But I guess I do have big tolerance when it comes to bad smells. Where does your experience of what cancers smell like come from? Not that I doubt you. I am just trying to figure out why your experience differs from mine.
 
ExMinister said:
Thanks, jli. You seem to have extensive experience with this and I don't doubt you. Or Skeptic Ginger.

The consensus seems to be that usually there is no odor but sometimes, even if rarely, there is. That being the case, and the fact that there is some ambiguity to it, I will probably have to ditch this idea.
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If you can't convince your friend that cancer doesn't always smell like rotting meat, you could perhaps show her a few examples of how bad things can go. There is an entry on what's the harm: http://whatstheharm.net/psychicsurgery.html
 
jli said:
I am (and has always been) a non-smoker. But I guess I do have big tolerance when it comes to bad smells. Where does your experience of what cancers smell like come from? Not that I doubt you. I am just trying to figure out why your experience differs from mine.
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Many years as a nurse in a number of hospitals including a long stint on a bone marrow transplant unit. Currently I'm a nurse practitioner in the infectious disease field but I've been around for a long time before that. I've taken care of many oncology patients.


I should add though, that both my parents died at home of cancer (15 years apart) and I don't recall any odor except the stupid cat litter box when my mom passed.
 
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ExMinister said:
Does anyone know whether cancer has a bad odor?

I have a friend who is all convinced that psychic surgery is real because of a book she read. So now I have read the book, and the author claims that while she was involved assisting in psychic surgery, cancer always had a terrible odor, like rotting meat.

My thought: The so-called psychic surgeon was probably using raw meat as pretend tumors to be removed.

So, in reality, does anyone know if cancer has a bad odor?
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Nurses have told me that cancer wards do have a different odor from other wards in hospitals.
I never noticed this on hospital visits but someone who works there would.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
,,,,, I've taken care of many oncology patients.
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Perhaps what you smelled wasn't the cancers. It could be metabolic products excreted with sweat (or otherwise). It is not something that I know for a fact. But it makes sense, and would make the ends meet.
 
Small diamines such as hexamethylenediamine are catabolic product of the degradation of amino acids and have really bad smell as the names, cadaverine and putrecine, indicate. Skin cancer victims often emit small amount of hexamethylenediamine that can be detected by good sniffers, such as dogs and me. I kept telling H Dad that there is something wrong with our old dog because I get whiff of really bad smell. We took the dog to the vet before we went for vacation one summer, but on the way to the island in Maine our dog started bleeding. The locall vet in Maine found a bad case of tumor and we had to put him to sleep. I still can't understand why the vet at home did not find the advanced case of tumor just a few days earlier.

I heard others, especcially hospice workers, say that the advanced case of skin cancer often have noticeable bad smell.

H Mom
 
jli said:
Perhaps what you smelled wasn't the cancers. It could be metabolic products excreted with sweat (or otherwise). It is not something that I know for a fact. But it makes sense, and would make the ends meet.
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I fail to see why it matters whether the source of the odor is the tumor or the result of the tumor.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I fail to see why it matters whether the source of the odor is the tumor or the result of the tumor.
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It matters only in the context of the original post. If I understood ExMinister correctly, it was the smell of the lump shown by the psychic surgeon that was the convincer. Not the smell of the patient.
 
Just a little bit on this in a NOVA video from a while back about dogs and their ability to smell some of the chemicals peculiar to cancer. Immediately following is a story about a dog that smells when a boy is going into a diabetes-caused hypoglycemia:

At 1:33:13:
 
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