Black Teenager Invents Low-cost Cancer cure
The future just might be in good hands after all. Earlier this month, Heman Bekele, a freshman at W.T. Woodson High School in Annandale, Virginia, scooped up this year’s 3M Young Scientist Challenge for his bar soap that treats skin cancer.
The 14-year-old was inspired, he says, by memories of people working long hours under the glaring sun in Ethiopia, the country where he was born before coming to the United States when he was 4. Even at that tender age, Bekele recognized the dramatic disparities in skin cancer survival rates in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa compared to places where high-tech cancer treatments are available.
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Over the next five years, the young scientist hopes to use his $25,000 winnings to refine this novel innovation and create a nonprofit to distribute his low-cost solution to communities in need.
For all y’all thinking, “good for this young man but what does it have to do with me; Black folks don’t get skin cancer,” guess again. Reggae legend Bob Marley died from melanoma that spread to his lungs and brain. In fact, according to the American Academy of Dermatology Association, skin cancer is the most common cancer in this country, and it’s usually diagnosed in us in later stages, when it’s more difficult to treat.
Kendra Lee is a writer who lives just outside Washington, D.C.
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