How Blind Women In India Detect Early Breast Cancer | Web-Slinging Silk Becomes Real

Dec 19, 2024

Kamala Thiagarajan, a science journalist with a focus on global health, discusses the Discovering Hands program that trains blind women in India to detect early-stage breast cancer through their acute sense of touch. The initiative not only enhances early detection but also empowers these women. Meanwhile, biomedical engineer Marco Lo Presti reveals exciting developments in creating a liquid silk adhesive inspired by Spider-Man’s web, exploring its potential applications in various fields, including biomedical technologies.

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ANECDOTE

Discovering Hands Origin

Discovering Hands, founded by Dr. Frank Hoffman, started in Germany.
It initially aimed to assist doctors with overcrowded waiting rooms by providing thorough breast examinations.

INSIGHT

Blind Women's Heightened Sense of Touch

Dr. Hoffman, concerned about late-stage breast cancer diagnoses, sought a solution.
He realized blind women's heightened sense of touch could improve early detection.

ANECDOTE

Exam Procedure

Examiners use braille tape to divide the breast into zones during exams.
Their fingertips probe for lumps, providing thorough checks that doctors often lack time for.

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A program trains women as tactile medical examiners to identify tumors before they show up on imaging scans. And, in a materials science discovery, scientists made a liquid silk solution that hardens and picks up objects—not unlike Spider-Man’s web.

How Blind Women In India Are Detecting Early Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide, just behind lung cancer. And the earlier a breast tumor is found, the more likely it is that the person survives their diagnosis.

An international program called Discovering Hands trains blind women to detect even the smallest lumps and bumps through breast exams. The idea is to leverage the blind examiners’ sense of touch, which may be more acute than sighted people’s, to feel for breast abnormalities and, hopefully, catch cancer in an early stage.

Discovering Hands has a cohort in India, a country where only around one in every two people diagnosed with breast cancer survive, and imaging equipment can be expensive or hard to come by.

SciFri producer Rasha Aridi talks with science journalist Kamala Thiagarajan, who reported on Discovering Hands’ program in India for NPR’s global health blog, Goats and Soda.

Accidental Breakthrough Makes Web-Slinging Silk A Reality

We’re all familiar with Spider-Man—the red-suited hero who swings through New York using spider silk that shoots from his hands. While Peter Parker has a radioactive spider to thank for his shooting webs, scientists at Tufts University have made their own version of liquid silk that solidifies and can pick up objects.

This discovery was made accidentally, says biomedical engineer Dr. Marco Lo Presti of the Tufts University Silklab. Lo Presti found that combining silk from a silkworm with dopamine and acetone made the silk change from a flexible liquid to a hardened fiber that attaches to objects.

Lo Presti joins guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about the possibilities of liquid silk adhesives, and the advancements he’d like to see to make the technology better.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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