TED | 2012 Intel Science Talent Search grand prize winner Jack Andraka and his detection method for pancreatic cancer
February 14, 2013
TED | Jack Andraka: Detecting pancreatic cancer. Fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka recently won the world’s largest high school science competition for his development of a new, cheap and accurate test for detecting pancreatic cancer. Jack was the 2012 Intel Science Talent Search Grand Prize Winner.
Related:
TED | “Detecting pancreatic cancer early: Q&A with 15-year-old Jack Andraka”
Wikipedia | Jack Andraka
Forbes | “Cancer, innovation and a boy named Jack”
Comments (14)
by Steve Waclo
Excellent!
Unintended consequences?
That’s why it has not been brought to market…yet.
Best wishes and sincere thanks to young Jack!
by GatorALLin
Loved the video and brought back good memories of doing science fair projects from middle school through high school. Loved the idea he came up with and how the idea of measuring it later was used also to calculate if a treatment was working (how fast, or by how much and if you could drop the 10 level he was using as the set level. Sounds great at 3cents each. Also that you could measure for other cancers or other bio-markers. My only remaining question was how many different types of cancers could you look for on the same test? Could you in theory test for EVERY known cancer or problem that you built it for (or does having different ‘cut off levels’ for each different cancer or bio-marker require a different test?).
…Keep up the great work…. we need more kids excited about science to help change and fix the world the rest of us either broke or could not fix yet.
by Patti
Why is it taking so long to get this to market????
by WLGJR
Because people waste their time watching sports/dramas (what Prof deGaris called “Peaker entertainments”) plus all kinds of other time wasters, when they should spend those time on DIY science/biopunking.
by Max Lent
I would like to know more about “Peaker Entertainments” could you provide a link to more info?
by Vin
I agree, but generally teenagers are a really wasted resource. But the information explosion and access is liberating them and the rest of us at last. About time! Dividends from the fresh view of playful lateral thinking. Somehow we got to curtail the pernicious aspects of society that usurp this playfulness into narrow channels for the sake of profit and private interest. I don’t know if that’s a naive comment, but what this kid has done is awesomely elegant.
by SmartAndSober
Before the researchers create the first AGI, the only “General Intelligence” available on Earth is human beings.
All human beings capable to learning, doing mathematics etc should contribute.
Question: can we “force” people to work (through law or other method)? (This perhaps sound too strong or inhumane, but the rewards will surely outweigh the sacrifices.)
by Editor
“Can we ‘force’ people to work?” — We already do, in a sense. But we seem to be creating a future in which work will be irrelevant, done by AIs, robots, automated 3D printing, etc. If so, the biggest problem we’ll have might be how to use the time. Maybe we need to fund imaginative people to think about that — like the people who comment here!
by WLGJR
I remember a news about Professor Allan Snyder’s experiments on shutting down people’s brain left hemispheres, lefting their right hemisphere working which results in “savant” abilities, such as counting visual data and recognizing prime number (the latter is really incredible to me)
I imagine some kind of sessile cyobrgs (in other words, biological supercomputers) that work 24/7, essentially cyborg slave-laborers, with the biology-only mental capacity(yes, deep down I am a vitalist) are exploited.
That would be unethical in real life, but I believe there is a way to circumvent the *ethics* problem (e.g. vat-grown or 3D printed biological tissues).
by WLGJR
Corrections:
“* instantly* Counting visual data”
“… *while* the biology-only mental capacities(yes, deep down I am a vitalist) are exploited. ”
Thanks.
by Vin
Maybe swap “force” with “clarify options for”. But I don’t know if that is the same thing.
by Aaron
Man…I wish I was that driven when I was 15. I’m fairly certain it’s not that I wasn’t “smart” enough, but I really just coasted along during high school without much care or interest…
by WLGJR
The kid was not particularly smart/knowledgeable either… he said he did not even know he had a “pancrea” before he looked up on the Net.
We can all be like him if we take advantage of the Internet in the right way.
by WLGJR
Great news. We need more smart youth like him.
Everyone should educate themselves on science and contribute to the world via the wonderful Internet.
http://www.singularityweblog.com/jack-andraka-on-singularity-1-on-1/