Wednesday, December 18, 2013

BLOGGER RECESS

 
Linda and her Mom, Borrego Springs, 2005
I wonder why I always pose her with the sun directly in her eyes
 
This is to warn you that I won’t be posting anything new for several weeks: I’m going to Cordova, Alaska for Christmas and New Year’s.  Then, of course, not long after I get back (one week, to be exact)  I will get my left knee replaced with something that works, or at least doesn’t hurt.  The operation will keep me out of trouble for another week or so.  So, if you get restless, re-read old blogs and make comments.  I feel safe inviting you to do this, because experience has shown that you won’t.  Someday, one of you is going to catch me in a blatant error, but I know you’ll be kind when you do.
I am still going to be working a little, however.  The Rivkin Center has kindly allowed me to look at proposals for their 2014 Pilot Awards.  I can even make comments, but they won’t count (I hope), or at least not much.  There are 88 of them, of which we can fund about eight.   A quick survey has shown me that of that total, all 88 are worth supporting!  This shows that there are lots of good ideas out there that ought to be followed up and exploited.  All that is lacking is – you guessed it - money.  Oh to be Bill Gates!


Friday, December 13, 2013

THE BECK FAMILY NEWLETTER, 2013


To paraphrase Ramses II:  She for whom the Christmas tree does shines its brightest.  (And her mother.)
 
Well, heck, it’s Christmas time again.  This is the third Christmas without Linda, and I seem to be missing her more all the time.   She loved the holidays, and her enthusiasm transmitted itself to all around her, making things special.  It won’t be that much fun this year, but I know she would want me to give it a try, and I am.  I spent Thanksgiving with Carolyn (and stayed on for her birthday), and in a few days I am going to Cordova for Christmas and New Year’s.  There I will meet my two great grandbabies, Seamus and Evelyn, for the first time, and also enjoy the company of my three granddaughters, one daughter – and, of course, their various male support staff.  It should be a blast.  Still, Linda’s little ornaments will spend another year in their box.  I urge you all to consider making an end-of-year contribution to cancer research.  Go to
and do it to honor Linda.  Write something in the “guest book”, too.
I am planning to cover the back of this page with pictures, so let me use the rest of this side to tell you what I’ve been doing, and what the immediate future holds.  I did get away from Bellingham some during 2013, but not to anywhere exotic.  I did the usual rain-avoidance stint in Borrego Springs; and I also had a great week in Flagstaff with Kristen and Joe.  I like that country (the Colorado Plateau and the Big Rez), and I hope to return frequently.  I have spent a considerable amount of time and energy in Seattle, trying to help out with ovarian cancer research.  As all of you probably already know, I am a volunteer with the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research (where I am trying to help Dr. Rivkin himself with various writing projects), and also a “research advocate” with the ovarian program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.  Other than that I just hang out in Bellingham, trying to keep the house livable and the cats fed.  So far I have succeeded – with the help of Molly for the first task, and Bunny and David for the second.  When I am in Seattle I stay with Karen, and we explore the cafĂ© and movie scene.  And that’s about it.  Not very exciting?  Hell, I’m 80 – a weekly beer with the boys fills all my social needs, darned near.
As for the future, well, hell, I get to have another joint replaced.  January 10th is the date, and the weeks before that are filling up with things I need to do – joint replacement class, stop medications, start other ones, see the doctor, see the nurse, make out  will, etc., etc.  When I got my first tin hip, maybe 20 years ago, I don’t recall all this fuss.  I’m sure it all is helpful – and of course it also helps guarantee full employment in the medical professions.  So, anyway, recovery time for an OF is of the order of six weeks, so I may not be able to spend much (or any) time in Borrego Springs this winter.  I should be recovered enough for Karen and me to take our planned trip: visit Kristen and Joe in Flag, then tour Indian Country.  I will wear my bola tie and Navajo silver belt buckle and fit right in.  (Hosteen Myrl, I will be.)  After that – no clue.  Continue to help out in Seattle.  Keep adding to my blog*.  Keep drinking beer with the boys.  Keep the house passable until Linda and Paul buy it  and I can move into a nice mobile home with no stairs.  And make sure my fat cats are healthy.  Pretty damned exciting, don’t you think?
·         http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6665628846095491748#overview/src=dashboard
So anyway, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! 
And P.S., to keep me in my place the Blogger robot won't let me post the second page.


Sunday, November 24, 2013

THE FORCES OF DIGITAL CONFUSION HAVE WON --for now!


I can’t get the blogging robot that governs “Myrl’sBlog” to relent an allow me to publish any more pictures.  Perhaps, at 172 blogs and nearly 10,000 hits it feels that I’ve used up my welcome.  However, the “Fight Back against Ovarian Cancer” blog robot still is willing to cooperate.  So this pathetic entry is to inform you that, for the immediate future at any rate, I will be posting new stuff to the “Fight” address.  For those of you who follow me directly, you can bookmark www.quiltcutie.blogspot.com and go directly to the site.  For those of you who follow me on Facebook, nothing will change.  And for those of you who don’t follow me at all:  shame on you.

Also, I am going to be away for the next ten days or so, so re-read old blogs and give me some feedback.  Thanks.  Myrl

Thursday, November 21, 2013

NUTS ASPIRIN COFFEE: All good for us? Why?


  To see the picture you'll have to click on: http://quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2013/11/nuts-aspirin-coffee-all-good-for-us-why.html.  When you get to the bottom you'll know why.

Amazing how quickly some news items get around!  There is a new paper by Dr. Ying Bao  (and six others) in the New England Journal of Medicine.  It is about nuts: they help you stay alive, apparently.   
In the last 24 hours I have heard about this study on TV (once), radio (twice), and read about it in two newspapers.  Contrast this with the cancer-sniffing-dogs story that broke in early September on “Sixty Minutes”, of all places, but has just now made it to the NY Times.  Maybe the Times was saving it for a slow-news day?  Anyway:
The nut result falls out of two massive studies, conducted on medical professionals, which lasted for a long time.  After “controlling” for potential confounding factors, nut-eaters appeared to die less (at any given age, of course; we all die eventually) than do non-nut-eaters.  Die of things like cancer and heart disease, that is – people who only eat nuts while driving rapidly on the freeway probably gain no net benefit.  The question of “why” doesn’t seem to have a definite answer as yet; there was some mention of reducing cholesterol (heart) and inflammation (cancer), but a detailed explanation was lacking.  The result apparently is robust statistically; although maybe we should get Dr. Ioannidis involved.  Moreover, it was logically dose-dependent: the more nuts you ate, the less likely you were to die.  So, pass the nut bowl.

As you can imagine, there are many “confounding factors" to be "controlled" for.  That is, maybe the cause and effect chain only carries nuts along for the ride.  To make up a stupid example:  When I drink beer with my buddies I often eat nuts.  I don’t doubt that there are many more beer-drinkers  like me.  So, maybe it is the beer that reduces mortality.  Or, to make it even more absurd, note that many people who drink beer drink too much, get a headache, then take aspirin.  It has been shown that aspirin is effective against some cancers, and also thins the blood, hence helps with stroke.  So maybe it’s the aspirin that goes along with the beer that accompanies the nuts that deserves the credit.  These are the sort of things that need to be controlled for.  Again, calling Dr. Ioannidis.

One disturbing fact about this study is that it was partially funded by the United Nut Pickers of the World, or some such body.  It is stated that they had no hand in the design of the experiment  nor interpretation of the results.  I’m sure that’s true – isn’t it?

Here are the links:




 Like I've said many times before:  I am from a generation that used dial telephones attached to the wall.  It is a wonder I have learned as much about computers as I have.  But - I have hit an intractable impasse:  I cannot get this damned Blogger program to allow me to post a picture.  As you may know, I have two blogs; the other one is called Let's Fight Back against Ovarian Cancer.  I semi-abandoned it months ago.  The interesting thing to me is that this orphan blog site will allow me to post the picture I wanted to post here - but not "Myrl's Blog".  As I am aware that most of you mainly use my painfully crafted blog essays as background for a picture gallery, I direct you to that other blog site.  I will keep on experimenting.   I will now try abject. groveling  surrender, in the hope that the computer gods will relent. 

The next day:  groveling didn't work. 
 

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

BEWARE GREEKS BEARING MANUSCRIPTS


Guess where
First Sabbatical, mid-1980s

On 5/22/12 I wrote a blog about Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis, a citizen and predominantly a resident of Greece.  At the time I thought he was primarily a Stanford University professor, but that appears to be only one of his part time jobs; He does most of his damage (I should say “work”) from his home country.  He is a world-renowned biostatistician and, it appears, one of the more influential persons in medical research.  My ignorance led me to give him short shrift:  see ALL IS NOT LOST, 5/22/12.

I returned to Dr. Ioannidis because I ran onto an article by a fellow Greek biostatistician, Dr. Eleftherios Diamandis.  Dr. D. was born on Cyprus, educated in Athens, and currently is a prominent member of the University of Toronto medical establishment.  This makes him a big gun, no question. 

Dr. Diamandis published a paper in 2010 which reminded me of Dr. Ioannidis’ ideas.  The title of the paper is “Cancer Biomarkers.  Can we turn recent failures into success?” *  It was published by the National Cancer Institute, which is no fly-by-night outfit, as you no doubt realize.  The paper is mildly discouraging.  In it Dr. D. summarizes work de-bunking several recent studies that, when published, seemed to promise rapid advancement in the war on cancer, but which later were shown to be either inconclusive or downright fallacious.   Painfully, some of them almost smacked of deliberate fraud!    

This is a serious avenue of thought I have stumbled upon, and I want to muddle it about in my head before I go any further.  Maybe after my first gin and tonic this evening it will all become clear.  In the meantime, one thing is obvious.  We need incentives to verify published research findings.  Even big, expensive clinical trials should be tested.  Repeated, even, by disinterested investigators.  As I wrote earlier, as things stand now there may be ample reason to verify work already published, but there is little incentive.  Journals don’t want to publish stuff like that, unless of course it leads to a juicy scandal.  Granting agencies and drug companies don’t want to fund “verification” proposals and – maybe the most powerful disincentive of all – you don’t get promoted by publishing negative results.  And, of course, if you do that sort of work nobody will want to eat lunch with you at the AMA convention.

Anyway, stay tuned for a Comment.  In the meantime, here is an article from The Atlantic that you might find rewarding.  As usual with that rag, it takes 104 words to describe what the NYTimes and The Economist could do in 103, and The Week could do fairly well with a couple hundred.  But give it a try, anyway.

By the way, my second great grandbaby is now at home in Cordova (I think)., joining what my daughter Kristen refers to as Her Royal Cuteness.  Should be quite a sight. 

*http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/102/19/1462.full  



 

Saturday, November 9, 2013

THE WAR ON CANCER


Looks like a birthday party
Probably mid 80s.
That piano is back home now, and I am trying to re-learn to play it.
It is over 100 years old.  Even older than me.
 
My thanks to Dick Ingwall for easing me through a dark and dreary Saturday painlessly, and even a little bit profitably.  Dick turned me on to an occasional series in the NYTimes called “RetroReport”, which consists of follow-up accounts of interesting news stories from the fairly recent past.   I spent several happy hours reading them.  However, Dick wanted me to see a Retro on the “War on Cancer”, which I did.  That’s what I’m going to write about.  Here is the link.  It has a video attached which is well worth enduring the inevitable initial ad to play itself out.  Hey, they’ve got to make money some way!
The War on Cancer (about which I have written before) began during the Nixon administration – and is still going on.  The idea, which sounded reasonable at the time, was that we could treat the eradication of cancer in the same (successful) way we had treated the Manhattan project (developing the atom bomb before Hitler beat us to it), or perhaps the race to the moon.  It was felt that if the vast resources of America – brains, equipment, money – could be efficiently focused on the task of curing cancer once and for all, success would be inevitable, and  moreover not long delayed.  The most important force behind the War was a New York heiress and socialite, Mary Lasker.  All good causes in this world should have their Mary Laskers.  Unfortunately, few do.
Anyway, we all know how the War is playing itself out.  Cancer turned out to be much more complicated than was conceived in the 1970s.  The “task” of defeating cancer evolved into a multitude of separate tasks, one for each kind of cancer.  “Cancer”, it was realized, was not one disease but a whole bunch of separate diseases.  We made progress good against some of these diseases (cervical, colorectal, lung, for instance) but have made distressingly little headway against others (pancreatic and ovarian are examples.)  Our War has begun to resemble WW I; we are bogged down in the trenches.  Our side is slightly ahead, but there is a long way to go before “Cancer” sues for peace.  This NYTimes article mentions several possible ways to break the stalemate, most of which I have written about before.  Finely targeted therapies based on genetics and molecular biology are the new weapons of choice.  In some fields prevention is prospering.  Early detection is stumbling forward a little.  But - no silver bullet yet.
Oh, by the way.  We have spent about $100 billion in the Cancer War so far.  This may sound like a lot but it is trivial: by one estimate, about 1.5% of the cost of the war in Iraq.. 
I am going to make a reading recommendation, but it is accompanied by a warning:  This book may be hazardous to your mental health.  The book is The Emperor of all Maladies: A biography of cancer*.  The author is Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist.  Some of the scenes in the book are so horrifying that they pop into my mind when I’m trying to sleep – and make me cringe.  And I read the book at least three years ago.  Dr.Mukherjee got the Pulitzer Prize for this book.  If there is a prize for making peoples’ skin crawl, he should win that one, too.  If you are really interested in cancer I encourage you to read this book.  But not for pleasure.
*Available from Abebooks.com for under $10


Thursday, November 7, 2013

MY FIRST GREAT GRANDSON


                                                                       Seamus


Meet Seamus Barry Wiese.  Big (nearly ten pounds), tall (nearly two feet), strong and, of course, beautiful.  He will attend Stanford on a football scholarship, stay on for medical school, and eventually – - cure cancer.  And all before he's 40.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

NANO BOMBS AND MATRYOSHKA DOLLS


Linda in Bangkok?
She never was east of Egypt
Where is this, anyway?
From time to time I have urged – even (quite rudely, I admit) ordered - you to read certain cancer-related stories in The Economist.  Well, as my primitive computer skills gradually mature I have discovered that I can just give you a link and let you read the thing yourself – if you feel like it.  I read The Economist while eating breakfast, so – as you read the link – you are to imagine it covered with bacon grease and egg yolk.  I used to donate my magazines to the nearest doctor’s office, but increasingly they are so disgusting I just throw them away instead.  Anyway, here is a link to the story I am about to write about:


The article talks about triple-negative breast cancer.  Note immediately:  it is misleading.  Most triple negative breast cancers are, contrary to the title of this story, treatable.  Some are aggressive and nasty, but others are as treatable as any other breast cancer.  Promising research is underway to develop new therapies, and here is a convenient link if you want to follow this up:


I am optimistic about several of these approaches, but especially about using PARP inhibitors.  PARP is a molecule that assists in repairing damaged DNA.  Cancers have DNA too, just the wrong kind.  Chemo and radiation therapies may damage the cancer DNA, and “inhibiting” the PARP keeps the damage permanent.  Ergo, the cancer cell croaks.  Good riddance. 

Exploring this web site would be a useful exercise. 

Anyway, “triple negative” means that the cell lacks “receptors” for two kinds of hormones, estrogen and progesterone.  Also absent are receptors for something called HER2.  Lacking these three kinds of receptors, cancer cannot be attacked with hormone therapy.  But, I emphasize, other treatments are possible and often quite effective.   

The Economist article describes the research of a chemical engineer, Dr. Paula Hammond of MIT, aimed at countering the effect of triple-negative-hood.  She has developed a tiny chemical “bomb”, consisting of three layers.  The outer layer is stuff that is attracted to cancer cells.  The second layer is composed of things called siRNA.   A siRNA is a short double-strand of RNA whose purpose in life is to interfere with the process of making some sorts of protein.  Naturally, the particular siRNA that Dr. Hammond uses is targeted: it prevents birth of a protein necessary to expel chemo drugs from the cell.  Then, not surprisingly, the core of this tiny “bomb” is a chemo drug!  Oh, by the way, Dr. Hammond’s missile is only a few millionth of a millimeter in diameter.  That's what Nano means.

So, anyway, her tiny bombs seem to work on mice.  Maybe someday they will work on humans.

Terms that may cause you to scratch your head as you read this article:

siRNA stands for small interfering ribonucleic acid.  They help regulate gene expression.

Matryoshka doll.  Most of us think of these things as Babyoshka dolls; Russian dolls that have smaller dolls inside them, and so forth.

As I write this I am still waiting to meet my first great grandson, Seamus.  He is taking his own sweet time putting in an appearance, the lazy little bugger! 

 


Saturday, November 2, 2013

WHILE I WAIT FOR SEAMUS


At Mata Ortiz, northern Mexico
Where all the expensive pottery comes from
 
Ah, November in Bellingham!  It is dark.  The clouds are scudding rapidly toward Canada.  The wind blows in formidable gusts, also toward Canada (natch).  Earlier it was raining so hard that there were waves of water running down the hill in front of my house (literally).  The cats are virtual zombies.  My monkey puzzle tree courageously fights back against the wind, but I fear for its life.
AND HERE I WAIT, FOR THE BIRTH OF MY FIRST GREAT GRANDSON!
To pass the time I have been trying for hours to figure out how to post something I just wrote, about medical statistics.  Yes, I really did intend to inflict it on you:  it is important, and I am in a bad mood.  But I can’t.  I had to hand draw some illustrations.  I can copy them to the text.  BUT WHEN I POST THE WHOLE THING TO BLOGGER, THEY DISAPPEAR!  I am going to Carolyn’s house for Thanksgiving.  No doubt she knows some sophisticated trick to solve my problem.  You’ll have to wait. 
But not to waste a blog, I have found a reasonably non-technical article on prevention of ovarian cancer.  It was written by Dr Magnus Westgren, of the prestigious Karolinska Institute of Stockholm.  I will give you the link at the end of this blog, if I remember.
In a nutshell, Dr. Westgren divides OVCA into two types.  Type I is relatively harmless and, unfortunately, relatively rare.  Type II OVCA is lethal – and, most often, originates in the fallopian tubes.  Dr. W recommends they be removed, especially in women with the BRCA 1 mutation.  He explains why he thinks as he does, but I didn’t understand everything he writes.  Maybe you will.


Monday, October 28, 2013

MESOTHELIN AND EARLY DETECTION



A churchyard in the Yorkshire Dales
Note the beautiful dry-stone wall
And, of course, the beautiful Linda
 
I am plunging back into the scientific literature regarding early detection of ovarian cancer.  I am pleased to be able to boast that I understand one hell of a lot more now than I did 18 months ago, when I took my initial dip.  That is not to say that I have anything like a competent handle on the subject, nor that you should believe anything I say.  Probably what I say now should be taken with an even larger grain of salt than previously: earlier, I was afraid to conclude much of anything, because of the obvious fact that I would probably be wrong.  Now I am beginning to think that I know something I am more inclined to make judgments and even (gasp!) give advice. The original warnings still apply: I am a superannuated earth scientist, awash in an ocean of biochemistry.  Don’t trust me.
That said, I want to talk (once again) about early detection of ovarian cancer.  I believe it is commonly agreed that early detection is the best way to save lives.  There seem to be two approaches to this task: develop a symptom index (of which I have written many times before), or find a “marker” – a molecule of some kind carried by the blood (or urine) .  The symptom index has proven useful, but unfortunately symptoms usually kick in only when the cancer is in a late stage of development.  The same can be said of two protein markers that elevate along with cancer development: cancer antigen 125 (CA125) and human epididymis protein 4 (HD4).  These markers often vary in unison, with the newly validated HD4 (validated by my Hutch group) showing perhaps the greater promise.  My group (and others) has developed a way of using changes in an individual woman’s CA125 (and HD4?) levels as a more sensitive predictor.   We have also tried to use a molecule called mesothelin* as a marker, but apparently with no outstanding success.  I hope we keep on studying mesothelin.  You certainly remember Jack Andraka, the 14 year old kid who has invented a 3 cent, 5 minute test for elevated mesothelin.  Mesothelin also is known to be elevated  in ovarian cancer.  Part of the argument against screening the general population for OVCA is that its prevalence is so low that the screening would be prohibitively expensive.  If there are 25 million post-menopausal women in the United States you could screen them all every year, using Jack’s test, for $75,000.  This  is a rounding error in the fiscal burden of cancer. 
It also has been shown fairly recently that microRNAs of certain types elevate with ovarian cancer.  Micro RNAs are very short strands of the nucleic acid RNA.  They are mysterious to some extent, but one thing they do is regulate gene expression: turn genes on and off, as needed.  I have an irrational hunch that miRNAs are going to be a big player in future cancer research.  Muneesh Tewari, of whom I wrote a short time ago, is studying miRNA.
So, yes, I am trying to get serious about this cancer biochemistry stuff.  To do that,  I need to understand some basic statistical concepts.  I am going to put them in a Comment – so that you can skip them without shame or effort.  Maybe in a few days…. 


Friday, October 25, 2013

ALSO SPRACH THE ECONOMIST



Linda and Phil Montague
On a hike near Tucson.
Mid 1980s
 
Back on May 22, 2012, I wrote a blog entry about the conclusions of one Dr. Ioannidis of Stanford University, a respected biostatistician, that “It can be shown that most published research is wrong.”  I gave my own version of that dictat: “ It can be shown that most published conclusions are based on faulty statistics”, or something like that. Obviously, a proposition can be correct even though the statistical evidence is weak.  Unfortunately, it also is possible for a proposition to be false, even if it is backed by pretty good stats.  I don’t want to get into stuff like confidence intervals, statistical “power”, Type 2 errors, and other equally arcane and  unamusing topics; I can only get you to read these things if I keep them light and frothy.  But, anyway, it seems that Dr. I is to be taken seriously.  I base that on the observation that no less a serious rag than the Economist made his ideas their cover story this week.  (How Science Goes Wrong.)  I would urge you to read it yourself, but I know most of you won’t .  It’s not light and frothy,  that’s for sure.  So I sacrificed myself and read it carefully.  I think it boils down  to the following set of propositions:
There is too much crap being published.  This is a result of several mutually supporting forces:
                Publish of perish.  You can’t make full professor if you publish just one paper per year, even if it’s pretty good.  Six sacks of you-know-what outweigh one sack of the real stuff. 
                Nobody wants to publish negative results.  If you do an experiment and find out that it doesn’t work you are unlikely to publish it.  If you do send it to a journal,  most of the time they will reject it.
Science is supposed to remain pure because “truth” is only ascertained after an initial experiment is duplicated.  Also, purity theoretically is enhanced by the process of “peer review”, involving several experts in your field reading your paper with a critical eye, and then telling the editor whether or not it should be published.  However:
                Many clever “experiments” have demonstrated that most referees, as these folks are called, are lazy bastards who don’t really do the job right.  And why not? – they have their own papers to write.  Nobody gets promoted for being a good referee.  I was a referee on many a paper, and I should be ashamed of myself.  Besides, referees don’t get paid.
                Nobody wants to repeat an experiment that someone else already has done.  If you get the same result, well –Whoopee!  If you get a different result, who knows who is right?  You get no merit increases or promotions for checking other peoples’ work.  They pay off on original discoveries. 
                Funding agencies are very unlikely to give you a big grant just to check on the work of somebody else.  They want something new, cutting edge, roll back the frontiers -  stuff like that.  Besides – your colleagues won’t like you if you spend all your time trying to prove them wrong.  Nobody will have lunch with you at the annual scientific conference.
Most scientists are poor statisticians.  (That goes for me, in spades.)  Increasingly, researchers are called upon to tease meaning out of enormous data sets.  This is particularly true in biomedical research, but also in some branches of physics and psychology.  Often the result sought is hidden in an enormous amount of noise.  If it were obvious, somebody would have found it long ago.
So, the Economist suggests a bunch of quick fixes.  Some the granting agencies are beginning to insist upon, which is good.  Others, though, are pie in the sky.  We will continue to muddle through, I fear.  Maybe the Jack Andrakas of the world will clean up the mess.  My generation never will.
 
P.S. Was this the most boring thing I ever wrote?  Probably.
 


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

How about ovarian, Jack?


Borrego Springs
She liked hiking, quilting, gourding, & just sitting in the sun
 
I used to watch the TV show “60 Minutes” years ago, but I stopped because I was put off by their frequent resort to what I call “gotcha journalism”.  They would ambush some poor chump and pummel him so badly that I would feel sorry for him, no matter what he was reported to have done (or said or thought, or represented)  But now, after Florence DiJulio alerted me to this segment I may have to start watching again.  Check this out, and stifle your disbelief.  This kid is real.. 
Jack Andraka is 15 years old and a high school freshman.  He has invented a method for detecting pancreatic cancer early.  The test costs 3 cents, and takes only minutes to perform.  I’m not going to try to tell you how it works: I don’t quite understand myself, I would garble what I think I know in the telling, and you probably don’t care, anyway.  Suffice it to relate that it involves detection of a rise in the abundance of the protein mesothelin.  Pancreatic cancers are associated with an abnormal concentration of mesothelin, apparently from an early stage.  If you can detect pancreatic cancer before it spreads you have a good chance of saving the life of the patient.  Otherwise, no.  Jack may just have saved thousands of lives.
 
Of course, Jack’s test has to get FDA approval, and this involves massive clinical trials extending over several (to many) years.  If I understand the situation correctly, Big Pharma (Pfizer, I think) stands ready and eager to shoulder the costs of such a test.  And why not?  If the test costs 3 cents and they sell it for a dime, and if everybody in America gets it, the gross profit would be something like $2.45 million.  (Better check my figures; I did that in my head.)  Anyway, profits would be enormous.  And, guess what?  Jack patented the idea!  At  that age all I could think about was girls and basketball!
 
It is well known that Bill Gates and, I think, Steve Jobs dropped out of college and went on to be billionaires.  Jack Andraka may be the first billionaire to drop out of high school.
 
To show you just how badly we need an early detection device for pancreatic cancer I’m going to try to attach a graph.

 
Hell, I can't figure out how to make this damned thing bigger
CAROLYN!

                 Oh, I see.  Just click on it and it gets bigger.  Who would have thought!  Duh!

Damn!  How I do hate dumping ice water on my own enthusiasms, but I must.  In reading about the cancer marker  mesothelin - that which Jack detects - I find that there is considerable doubt about  usefulness for detecting pancreatic cancer.  I will dig deeper and report.