Indian Wonder boy - Akrit Jaswal

Wonder boy - Master Akrit Jaswal

Akrit Jaswal - He is my favorite hero these days!!

Last week I happened to watch this Oprah Winfrey show. I normally do not watch it as it comes during my working hour.. but I was home with  pretty high blood pressure, I managed to watch it... and oh my god what a show.

This particular episode was on wonder kids who have done wonderful things at an early age. I may not have watched it.. but I saw an Indian boy in the show who wants to cure Cancer. I really loved this boy who was I think about 10 or 11 and told the professor in some London University that the professor is wrong ... and gave his views..:)

... and aren't we proud of somebody like him. I think we should also get him for a short interview in the forum... :)

Here is a info about this boy from Certain Websites..

OPRAH'S WEBSITE

Years ago, footage emerged from a remote village in India. The video shows a young girl receiving surgery to separate her fingers, which were badly burned and fused together. Why did this operation make headlines around the world? The surgery was performed by a 7-year-old boy named Akrit Jaswal.

Now 13 years old, Akrit has an IQ of 146 and is considered the smartest person his age in India—a country of more than a billion people. Before Akrit could even speak, his parents say they knew he was special.

"He learned very fast," says Raksha, Akrit's mother. "After learning the alphabet, we started to teach him joining of words, and he started writing as well. He was two."

At an age when most children are learning their ABCs, Akrit was reading Shakespeare and assembling a library of medical textbooks. When he was 5 years old, he enrolled in school. One year later, Akrit was teaching English and math classes.

Akrit developed a passion for science and anatomy at an early age. Doctors at local hospitals took notice and started allowing him to observe surgeries when he was 6 years old. Inspired by what he saw, Akrit read everything he could on the topic. When an impoverished family heard about his amazing abilities, they asked if he would operate on their daughter for free. Her surgery was a success.

After the surgery, Akrit was hailed as a medical genius in India. Neighbors and strangers flocked to him for advice and treatment. At age 11, Akrit was admitted to Punjab University. He's the youngest student ever to attend an Indian university. That same year, he was also invited to London's famed Imperial College to exchange ideas with scientists on the cutting edge of medical research.

Akrit says he has millions of medical ideas, but he's currently focused on developing a cure for cancer. "I've developed a concept called oral gene therapy on the basis of my research and my theories," he says. "I'm quite dedicated towards working on this mechanism."

Growing up, Akrit says he used to see cancer patients lying on the side of the road because they couldn't afford treatment or hospitals had no space for them. Now, he wants to use his intellect to ease their suffering. "[I've been] going to hospitals since the age of 6, so I have seen firsthand people suffering from pain," he says. "I get very sad, and so that's the main motive of my passion about medicine, my passion about cancer."

Currently, Akrit is working toward a bachelor's degrees in zoology, botany and chemistry. Someday, he hopes to continue his studies at Harvard University.

TEAM FOCUS

The Seven Year-Old Surgeon

Article dated June 2006

Author(s):  The Sunday Times

An Extract from the preview of the programme (The Times Dec 04, 2005):

My cure for cancer, by the boy genius

The 'medical Mozart' is sublimely confident of his breakthrough, he tells Cosmo Landesman

Akrit Jaswal is a young Indian who has been called "the world's smartest boy" and it's easy to see why. His IQ is 146.

He began to read Shakespeare at the age of four. He was seven years old when he carried out his first medical procedure and now at the ripe old age of 12 he tells me: "I have discovered a cure for cancer." In his home village in Himachal Pradesh, northern India, Akrit is treated like a god. The local children know him as "the genius". Adults come to him to discuss their ailments and prescriptions. He is a prodigy who has been touted in America and sold to the media as a Mozart of modern medicine. But Akrit has his critics and plenty of people are sceptical about the claims made on his behalf. Some say he is just a very bright boy with an exceptional memory but no real gift for science. Others claim he is the victim of pushy parents who stole his childhood.

In person Akrit doesn't look like your typical boy genius. He doesn't have the big goggles, the jacket with a row of Biros in the top pocket and the boy-wonder bow tie. He has the typical jeans-and-trainers look of a 12-year-old. He is anxious to present himself as just an ordinary boy, but one with an extraordinary brain. "I'm just like any other kid, except when it comes to talking about science." He even boasts he's no "bookworm" or a "boffin". "No, I don't spend all my time reading and studying," he tells me. "I was given a copy of Stephen Hawking's book, but I've never read it."

Akrit came to public attention when in 2000 he performed his first medical procedure at his family home. He was seven. His patient — a local girl who could not afford a doctor — was eight. Her hand had been burnt in a fire, causing her fingers to close into a tight fist that wouldn't open. Akrit had no formal medical training and no experience of surgery, yet he managed to free her fingers. For the first time in five years she was able to use her hand.

I ask him how he managed to carry out the procedure; wasn't he nervous? "No, I wasn't. I have read many medical books and attended many operations. I think I did a better job than most surgeons. They would have opted for plastic surgery, but I didn't need to."

The fact that carrying out such a procedure is illegal doesn't worry him. "Yes, it was illegal. But it does no harm. It's good for mankind. So what if it goes against dead old medical ethics?" Akrit's interest in science began at the age of four. "It was then that I read Gray's Anatomy and books on chemistry. I studied physics up to A-level standard. I was fascinated by science because it could answer all the questions I had about life — how we got here and why we are here. But now I'm older I have to find new answers."

One answer he is confident of finding is a cure for cancer. It's this claim that has brought him worldwide media attention, admiration . . . and derision.

So how does a 12-year-old with no medical training and no lab experience discover a cure for cancer? "I actually made my discovery when I was eight. I did it by reading books on cancer and getting information from the internet. My cure aims at the modification of malformed genes that cause cancer and their successful repair either by the activation of enzymes or direct modification of genotoxic drugs."

Is this boy deluded? A victim of his parents' high expectations? Common sense tells us that 12-year-old boys do not cure cancer, but our belief in the power of the child prodigy makes us wonder: maybe it is possible.

Akrit recently visited London to participate in a forthcoming television documentary about his life (to be shown on Five in January). While here he achieved his dream of trying out his ideas for curing cancer on researchers at Imperial College.

Professor Mustafa Djamgoz, who spent a number of weeks with the boy, told me: "There's no doubt he is a brilliant boy. He really knows his stuff and has put his heart, soul and mind into finding a cure for cancer. But his solution is not that novel. In theory it could work, but it would be premature to say he has found a cure."

Society is ambiguous in its attitude to child prodigies such as Akrit. We admire them, envy them, would like our own children to have their gifts — yet we also want to believe those who are blessed are also cursed with all sorts of emotional and psychological problems. But Akrit refuses to play the victim and is annoyed by reports he was never allowed a normal childhood. "Oh come on," he says with weary resignation. "I had plenty of friends to play with when I was a child and, yes, I had nursery rhymes too."

"Don't you feel your parents put too much pressure on you to succeed?" I ask. "No, I never feel that. My parents never put pressure on me. In fact they're the ones who are always saying you should rest and chill out." I suspect this is not the case. Akrit has long been under considerable pressure to succeed, especially by his father. When Akrit was eight his father resigned from his job as an economics adviser in Delhi so he could devote himself to his son's talents. He moved the family back to their home village and set up a school for his son so his talents could be nurtured. He began a crusade to get the boy into a medical school when he was eight, but no Indian school would accept anyone under 17.

Akrit's father and mother have since separated. She says it was the frustration of not getting the boy into medical school that destroyed the marriage. Before he left, Akrit's father said: "Call me when you cure cancer." The boy has not seen him for more than a year.

At present, Akrit is attending university where he is doing a BSc undergraduate course in medicine. It can't be easy being the only 12- year-old there. The question that hangs over the boy's head is this — will he ever be able to live up to everyone's expectations? What happens if his ideas do not in fact cure cancer? "I will be embarrassed, but I will never give up trying," he says.

Talking to him you get the impression that the most intense pressure to succeed comes from within. Although there's no doubting he is a very gifted boy, such children do not usually go on to do great things when they grow up. Linda Silverman, of the Gifted Development Centre in America, who examined Akrit when he was eight, makes the point that "most gifted people do not seek or achieve fame".

That's certainly true of recent British prodigies. Remember Ruth Lawrence who, at the age of 12, went to Oxford to study mathematics? Today she lives in Israel as an Orthodox Jew. And the ones who go on to succeed can often turn out pretty weird (Bobby Fischer) or die prematurely (Mozart). Only time will tell if Akrit has been blessed or cursed.