US student, 14, wins award for developing soap to treat skin cancer

3 years ago by MicroWave to c/upliftingnews

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.

PatFussy 147 points 3 years ago

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.

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UnderpantsWeevil 57 points 3 years ago

Also almost certainly doesn't work as the headline describes.

"Teenagers cures cancer" is shameless click bait.

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Cosmicomical 16 points 3 years ago

Yeah "wins award" is also ridiculous, if that was true this kid would deserve the nobel prize

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elbarto777 -9 points 3 years ago
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orrk 53 points 3 years ago

anything that credits a single person for any modern development

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ultratiem 8 points 3 years ago

So Gore didn’t invent the internet??

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bingbong 5 points 3 years ago

He laid the series of tubes down

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bullshitter 6 points 3 years ago

It's what movies have brainwashed us to think what a hero would do to save the world instead of giving credit to the collective.

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elbarto777 1 point 3 years ago
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Tangent5280 5 points 3 years ago

This exact news article is one, but I suppose that doesn't count.

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orrk 1 point 3 years ago

sure Edison, did almost nothing himself, is still erroneously praised as "inventor of the light bulb" and other shit

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Dra 11 points 3 years ago

Every single discovery or development that has ever occurred

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elbarto777 -2 points 3 years ago
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Cyberflunk -11 points 3 years ago
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PatFussy 29 points 3 years ago

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.

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moonpiedumplings 5 points 3 years ago

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.

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/...

It's not that phd's are incapable of doing it, it's simply that they never bothered taking a crack at this problem, using this method.

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elbarto777 1 point 3 years ago
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1847953620 5 points 3 years ago

no, fuck that little bobby twerp nerd looking headass

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Rodeo 5 points 3 years ago

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?

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hark 49 points 3 years ago

Does it actually work?

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MicroWave 105 points 3 years ago
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jasory 72 points 3 years ago

Whenever you read "X-year old does something", it's usually already been done or a slight modification of something already been done.

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RedditWanderer 44 points 3 years ago

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.

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UnderpantsWeevil 33 points 3 years ago

At 14 that’s incredible

It's incredible to have the opportunity to mentor with a senior research analyst at 3M.

Wish more kids were given this kind of opportunity without going six figures into debt

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snooggums 26 points 3 years ago

Whenever you read “person does something”, it’s usually already been done or a slight modification of something already been done.

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blanketswithsmallpox 26 points 3 years ago

On the shoulders of giants is a thing for a reason.

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rustydrd 11 points 3 years ago

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.

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grabyourmotherskeys 7 points 3 years ago

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.

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garbagebagel 2 points 3 years ago

Were your tests conclusive?

I did mine on whether brown eggs would boil faster than white.

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squiblet 1 point 3 years ago
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Malfeasant 1 point 3 years ago

Whenever anyone does anything, that's usually the case...

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cricket97 -1 points 3 years ago path: 0 4908074 4908228 4909320 4918923, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0
ArtificialLink -9 points 3 years ago

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"

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_number8_ 35 points 3 years ago

He has a five-year plan

this is one of those business buzzwords that makes my skin crawl

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WoahWoah 10 points 3 years ago

Yes, a timeline and plan for reaching a goal. So buzzy.

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ArmokGoB -9 points 3 years ago path: 0 4908074 4908228 4908873 4908923 4909529, hotness: undefined, score: -9, children: 6
ThePantser 9 points 3 years ago

There's a cream for that

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synceDD -6 points 3 years ago

Crawling over words lmaooo soy

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wandtpag 4 points 3 years ago

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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jwt 44 points 3 years ago

Sponsored by 3M. Cool, so now they can give the soap to all people living near their PFAS plants.

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Mr_Blott 37 points 3 years ago

I believe in this guy 110% simply because of his massive Carlton vibes

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moistclump 4 points 3 years ago

Strong Carlton vibes. It’s true.

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Hotdogman 27 points 3 years ago

Aaaand patented. JandJ's new cancer bars require you to use the soap everyday for the rest of your life to stave off the cancer.

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GentlemanLoser 34 points 3 years ago

To stave off cancer caused by their other products

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jasondj 5 points 3 years ago

Wait when did J&J cause skin cancer? I’ve only known of the asbestos baby powder.

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GentlemanLoser 10 points 3 years ago

Breast cancer, skin cancer...Are we gonna split squamous cells here

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uberkalden 14 points 3 years ago

Let me guess, J&J is hiding the true magic cure for cancer from us all?

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espentan 6 points 3 years ago

Of course, if you don't want to die you best spend a significant amount of your income helping the few get rich(er).

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Hangglide 7 points 3 years ago

Add in some sunscreen to the soap and it will clean, prevent, and cure. A trifecta!

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andrew_bidlaw 4 points 3 years ago

HeMan and the Soap against Melanoma

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EternalNicodemus 2 points 3 years ago

Wait the immortality elixir is just all soap? Always has been shoots

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tsonfeir -5 points 3 years ago

If he releases it for free then he’s amazing. If he tries to profit on it, then he’s part of the problem and we shouldn’t celebrate him.

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Lophostemon -16 points 3 years ago

There’s no way that dude is 14. Perhaps I’ve been staring at AI creepiness too long but that guy is easily mid 20’s.

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FunderPants 33 points 3 years ago

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.

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Lophostemon 6 points 3 years ago

Ok. Fair point. Didn’t know that. Will do better. Maybe it’s the small photo I’m looking at. There’s no racism intended.

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FunderPants 1 point 3 years ago

You're awesome, Good work.

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jasondj 19 points 3 years ago

I’m not sure how to interpret this comment.

Are you saying you’ve been staring at a lot of AI generated children?

Would you like to take a seat right over there?

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protist 15 points 3 years ago

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

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FunderPants 17 points 3 years ago

Yea, adultificaton. Lots of peer reviewed papers written on it.

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HikingVet 7 points 3 years ago

Because prodigies can't exist? Or is it some other less savoury preconception?

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FlyingSquid 5 points 3 years ago

So this is a 21 Jump Street scenario, except with medicine?

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