Heman Bekele was inspired by Ethiopian workers laboring under the sun, and wanted to help ‘as many people as possible’
A middle-school teen has been named “America’s top young scientist” after developing a bar of soap that could be useful in the treatment of melanoma, a skin cancer that is diagnosed in about 100,000 people in the US each year and kills approximately 8,000.
Lets get 1 thing straight, no he most likely didnt invent this, a team at 3M did. You always see these stories about rich kids and how they did this amazing thing while at their internship where their dad is the lab manager/owner when in reality these companies just wanted a poster child who was just some intern that is still learning about what titration means. I would bet that the extent of this kids biochemistry knowledge is that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
I stayed at a holiday inn last night thats how I know. Do you really need proof that a 12 year old in middle school figured something out that people with PhDs have not done?
If this kid did anything other than throw shit at the wall then ill deliver a video of me eating my entire stack of textbooks from college.
Considering I know someone, personally, who also made a scientific advancement at a young age, yes, it is possible.
They taught themselves python, then how to inference and train machine learning models, then used image recognition models to detect their sister’s illness, which had visual signs.
They had to get help from someone with a phd to test this on a larger scale, cuz resources, but I absolutely believe a middle/high schooler could do it.
If you read the article, you’ll realize that he didn’t invent the active components that fight cancer. He invented a new vehicle to deliver such components - the soap.
For all intents and purposes, the headline is accurate. He invented the soap to treat skin cancer.
Little Bobby invents a robot that can peel potatoes. Will you say that little Bobby didn’t really do anything because he didn’t invent robots, blades or potatoes?
Little Bobby had an idea for a potato peeling robot and then somebody else took his idea and actually made it while Bobby is still daydreaming about it.
Will you say little Bobby invented a new kind of robot?
while you may not like the example, the truth is a lot of these types of things required organizations and teams to develop (modern word for invent, because I have had interactions with people that illiterate), but that doesn’t fit in the popular narrative of the genius inventor who through hard work and determination made the world better and got rich for it.
Adultificaton is a common racial bias where people see black children as older than they are, it results in a number of problems for those children.
I have fallen for this bias, as a largely unconscious bias we all can fall for it. I think one of the things we can do is self check when it happens to us and point it out when others perpetuate it.
This is one reason why black children are killed by police at higher rates than other races, because they often look older than they actually are and people/police assume they’re adults when they are not
Heman’s mentor, 3M product engineering specialist Deborah Isabelle, said she could see the teen’s energy and passion for the project from their first meeting. She described Heman as “focused on making the world a better place for people he hasn’t necessarily even met yet.”
The soap, called Skin Cancer Treating Soap (SCTS), works by using a compound that helps revive dendritic cells, which are killed by cancer cells. Once the dendritic cells are revived, they are able to then fight against the cancer cells. In essence, it reactivates the body’s healing power, Isabelle said.
Similar creams and ointments exist, Heman said, but he doesn’t believe soap has ever been used to fight against skin cancers in their early stages.
He has a five-year plan, which includes seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Isabelle has already connected him with other scientists who specialize in medical products to help him move forward with his plans.
Hard eye roll. Many people plan in 1, 2, 5, 10, and 25 year timelines. This is reductio ad hitleriam taken to its limit point. I’m super glad you’re not a teacher.
I was thinking the similar. It’s used in business because it works. Most likely some of the anti-work crowd spouting of crap they think they know about but in reality don’t.
Work is hard. I’m against bullshit jobs and exploiting labor, but there’s no world without people getting up, getting off their phones, and getting to work. There’s a nascent sentiment that we would go back to “how it was,” and that we should only work to do things that are beautiful.
We should have more time for that. But your shit goes somewhere. Your trash goes somewhere. And you need to eat. As someone that’s shoveled shit, hauled trash, grown food, and hunts, that’s not easy work. You can’t just wake up one morning with the clarity that no one should do anything they don’t want to do. Everyone needs to do things they don’t want to do.
Work is honorable, and the hardest work I’ve done in my life was the lowest paying, most disrespected, most valuable work I’ve ever done. The fact that we’ve lost sight of that is troubling.
Pay people well. Very well. And if you went to college for it, then you should get paid less than the people that do the actual work, so they can get paid more. Cut the top end off most companies. They went to college too. I went to college, I work a white-collar job. I’m happy and financially comfortable. I know for the real workers to get paid more, I’ll need to be paid less. A college degree doesn’t mean you deserve to be paid more.
That’s just my opinion, and I could be (and likely am) wrong. I’ve been wrong a lot in my life. I’m a better person for it, because I realized it. So there’s a lot of evidence to support the fact that my opinion is wrong. But because I’ve been wrong so often and have tried to grow each time, I’m less wrong than I used to be. I wake up each morning comforted by how I’ve handled my failures.
Success is a fleeting feeling for me. Earned knowledge from my failures and the knowledge that I’ve tried to recognize them and improve myself each time makes me sleep quite happy at night. And when I’m doing something, my fear of failure shrinks every year.
Must be fun to be so cynical all the time. Otherwise idk why you would do it? Like yeah fuck them kids. Better to not encourage them at all and say “you stupid idiot someone basically already did this what you’re doing is pointless, dumbass”
When I was 14, I was not helping to cure cancer. My science fair project was about salt raising the boiling point of water. :) I’ll give him props but you’re right.
Even if the active ingredients are already known, developing a new mode of application for an existing drug is an enormous accomplishment for a student his age. Plus, the alternative (minors doing experiments with unapproved drugs) is likely illegal, so there’s only so much they could do.
Don’t underestimate our ability to miss the obvious. You’re talking about the race that over 3000 or so years, forgot scurvy was cured by vitamin C over 10 times.
They also used to shape steel wire by pulling it really hard through a kinda steel funnel. This works because the tensile strength of steel is much higher than its yield strength, so you can pull on it with more force than it takes to shape it, without it snapping.
Back in the day, we figured out corrosion helped make the steel slippery when it went through the shaping tool. We though it was because some dudes pissed on the steel, so for a while after people pissed on their steel. Until people started figuring out beer worked just as well, and then half beer half water.
Until they finally realized water worked just as well to create corrosion. It took a couple hundred years.
Sometimes it just takes someone to think about it and do it. At 14 that’s incredible, kids aren’t that selfless at that age.
I think both of your statements are correct - lots of innovations are right in front of us, are simple, and that’s the kinda shit scientists love. More kids, but really people of any age, should be given opportunities like this given passion or even a passing curiosity.
Soap is a rinse-off product. It'll never be as effective as leave-on ointments because the substances that actually do something will mostly be gone as soon as they're rinsed off the skin...
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