Have you ever had a problem
you would give everything to solve - a problem so difficult you would spend
years searching for a solution?
When Jack Andraka was
thirteen, he had a whole pile of problems like this. An outsider at school, he
knew he didn't fit in - and a close family friend was dying of cancer. But
instead of giving in to the bullying and the despair, he took another path. Using
his passion for science, he decided to try to create a better method of cancer
detection.
After conducting two years
of research and asking hundreds of universities and companies for help, to no
avail, Jack was finally able to secure the lab space necessary to test out his
ingenious idea. In the end, he did it. Jack's early-detection test for
pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancers has the potential to be more than four
hundred times more effective than the medical standard - and it costs only
three cents per use.
Jack was just fifteen at the
time he came up with his solution. Jack Andraka's story is not just one of
inspiring teenage success; it is a story of overcoming depression and
homophobic bullying, and of finding the resilience to persevere.
No comments:
Post a Comment