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.
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.