It was in 1880 when he created a 16 watt bulb that burned for 1500 hours. Not many of us have the kind of drive and determination to stick with something you know it will work, even though you experience failure after failure. Yet those are the individuals that carve a path to the future.
TEENAGE BOY FINDS PANCREATIC CANCER TEST
Jack Andraka is living this famous quote by Edison. In 2012, Jack was a 15 year old boy from Crownsville, Maryland. Jack watched a beloved family friend, who was like an uncle to him, die of pancreatic cancer. Rather than accept it as fact of life, he chose to become proactive.
He realized that a significant part of the problem was a lack of early detection tests. So he decided to come up with a test to detect cancer in its earliest stages. Pancreatic Cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death, taking 34,000 lives a year. Unfortunately this disease is usually detected late in its progression and has an extremely low survival rate after diagnosis.
WHY IS ANDRAKA’S TEST DIFFERENT?
Current testing methods are 60 years old, cost on average $800, and miss 30% of all pancreatic cancers.
The test Jack developed is:
– 168 times faster
– 26,000 times less expensive
– 400 times more sensitive than the current standard of detection
– He did his research using Google and Wikipedia as his primary research tools — online resources that are
– available to virtually anyone on the planet with an internet connection.
– The cost for his test: Three cents!
It takes five minutes, and has a 100 percent accuracy rate. Compare that to the current standard, which employs 60-year-old technology, costs about $800, and misses 30 percent of all pancreatic cancers.
Children have something that slowly fades away in adults. They have this refusal ability where they simply don’t accept something as it is and that’s that.
As we grow up we are told that some things are the way they are and we supposedly cannot do anything about them. But kids refuse to believe in that. And that’s why they are the ones who most of the time come up with ideas that change the world.
Please take the time to watch the video below:
