Jack Andraka, Intel Science Fair Winner

(Music)

Mark Masselli: This is Conversation on Health Care. I am Mark Masselli.

Margaret Flinter: And I am Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli: Well Margaret as we look around the country we are starting to see
some more promising signs around the online insurance market places according to
some independent analysis there’s been a dramatic decrease in the number of
error s on the back end at the Hea lthc are.gov we bsite .

Margaret Flinter: Well, Mark I can help thinking about one of old favorite Beta
Science it’s getting better all the time and think it’s going to take just a little more time
and we have a few days lef t. Folks who want to be covered by the first of the year of
20 14 have just a short time, the deadl ine for signing up for coverage i s December
rd
23 .

Mark Masselli: And Margaret while the news is generally being good regarding the
State Base Exchanges, there are still some problems to ir on out but the good news n
we say it each day as we’ve being doing enrolment, people are coming in to learn
more about their insurance opportunities and for the most part I think they walk away
with the smile on their face.

Margaret Flinter: And, you kno w, there is some similarity to what happen ed back
with the role of Medicare party which of course has really been widely successful in
most people ’s eye so remember back then Senior (inaudible 1:12 ) they complete d
the application, might h ave still been som e conclusion but I believe if they had
enroll ed that was honored on the start dates of – we expect we’ll see that happen.

Mark Masselli: And we’ll keep rising the price which is to make sure that millions of
uninsured American s gain coverage.

rd
Margaret Flinter: Well, that December 23 end date brings u s right up to it will be
th
the anniversary on December 24 of the third year since the Affordable Care Act
was passed by Congress and of course speaking of the holidays we have a little bit
of a t reat f or our listeners, a little something differently we've never featured a young
pre college person on the show but we’ve come across very remarkable young man
who we think is poised to do some amazing things with his scientific curiosity.

Mark Masselli : Jack Andraka has been gaining global attention since winning last
year Intel Science and Engineering Award for a device he created that can diagnose
early stage pancreatic cancer . He’s been an African guest at the White House, he
was awarded by the Vat ican, he has been describe this as the prodigy of pancreatic
cancer by Smithsonian and is the only teen to have been invited to speak at the
Royal College of Physicians.

Margaret Flinter: And he began this ground breaking career and research when he
was 13, he is all of 16 years old now and making waves in scientific circles, very
exciting to see what a young scientist is able to accomplish, sum up with the help of
the internet, but really with a giant dose of discipline and curiosity.

Mark Masselli: Lo ri Ro bertson, Managing Editor F act C heck . org will be stopping by
to shine a spot light on mis statement about the health policy.

Margaret Flinter: And no matter what the topic you can hear all of our shows by
Googling CHC Radio.

Mark Masselli: And as always, if you have comment s, please contact us at
CHCRadio.com or find us on Facebook or Twitter, we’d love hearing from you.

Margaret Flinter: We’ll get to our interview with Jack Andraka in just a moment.

Mark Masselli: But, first here’s is our producer Marianne O’ Hare with this week ’s
Headline News

(Music)

Marianne O ’Hare: I’m Marianne O’ Hare, with these Health Care headlines.
Business is picking up at Heathcare.gov and there are been some notable changes
since the re c a l i bration and over haul at the site, namely it’s functioning. CMS official
saying the site is easily handling a million visits or more a day and there’s another
significant change that was criticize d in the original design, folks can now shop
online for plans before having to c ommit all their information to the site making for
more user friendly experience according to consumer reports which has been
monitoring the exchanges . Meanwhile there are still some problems erupting on
some of the state’s exchanges, Maryland’s Exchange Director quit over (inaudible
3:51 ) with that site, then the centers of Medicare and Medicaid washing a
challenging roll out the federal exchange has decided to give medical practices more
time to adopt to another deadline pushing the stage t w o meaning ful use
requirements for health IT up to 2016 and stage three to 2017. The extension is
meant to give more time to focus efforts on enha nce d patient engagement,
interoperability and health information exchange as well. And many stake holders n
others have ca lled for stage two implementation to be delayed including the
American Medical Association, American Hospitals Association and American
Academy of f amily physicians and a decision has been made in Connecticut, a judge
has temporarily block United Health Ca re from being allowed to drop 2200
physicians from its Medicare Advantage Plan in several Connecticut based medical
societies filed sued against the insurers and it would deliberately compromise care
being delivered to seniors who are in their patient popu lation. Ohio and New York
are considering a similar action, United Health Care says it will fight the decision. I
am Marianne O Hare with this Health Care Headlines.

( Music )

Mark Masselli: We are s peaking today with Jack Andraka, 16 year old inventor
scientist and cancer researcher, he is the recipient of the 2012 Gordon E. Moore
Award , grand price of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his
work in developing a new method to detect early stage pancreatic and other cancers.
Mr. And raka has won the first youth achievement, Smithsonian American Ingenuity
Award for his breakthrough work as well as the White House distinction for

promoting open science . This Maryland High School junior has been called the te en
prodigy of pancreatic cancer by the Smithsonian Institute. Jack welcome to
Conversations on Health Care .

Jack Andraka: Hey, great to be here.

Interviewer: You have created what's are being describe as a potential game
changer in detecting early stage pancreat ic ovarian, lung and other hard to detect
cancers and your research began at the age of 13 and by age 15 you created the
simple device that’s earned you so much international claim, a dip stick with
nano tube fibers that detect proteins present in early stag e pancreatic cancer and it's
being describe d as both simple and elegant by scientist with far more extensive
training and experience. So tell our listeners how you decided to tackle something
that has eluded cancer researcher for decades and where did you get the idea that
lead to the creation of this device?

Jack Andra ka: So I become in interested in pancreatic cancer when I was 13, when
a close family friend who is like an uncle to me actually pass ed away from the cancer
and when I dug a bit deeper on the internet I found that 8 5% of all pancreatic cancer
patie nts are diagnosed at late stage , w hen they have less than 2 % chance of
survival and then I realize that out current method detect ion is six years old and cost
$ 800 and grossing ( 6:50 Inaudible) mi ssing 30 % of all pancreatic cancer. And so
after month s and month s of just researching all these different topics as in Google
Wikipedia , I timely ha d this break through in my high school biology class where I
was read ing an article, American ’s Single - Walled Carbon Nanotube and those are
long term pipes of carbon ( 7:10 Inaudible) so they are very, very small and they
have these amazing properties and they are kind of like the superhero of the material
science. So I w as reading this article and t heir properties, well we’re learning what I
antibodies, molecules are only reacted to one specific protein, in this case a cancer
bioma rker that’s found in your blood stream when you have these different cancer s
and they though t maybe if I combine these tw o concept s then I will get something
cooler that because essentially you have a network that would only react to one
specific protein but would also change the logical properties based on the amount of
protein present and I though t that could indicate the presence of pancreatic cancer
that change in electrical properties.

Margaret Flinter: Well Jack I think you have called this approach to research your
combination of insatiable curiosity and maybe some youthful optimism but I'm r eally
curious, you refere nce d your high school biology class I think that you are in and I
when you look at your educa tion, when you look at the setting and the way American
education set up for science right now, what is your epiphany teacher about how we
can train the next gener ation of scientist s , it's sounds like you had some pretty good
resources and mentors and support the r e in pursuing your own creative scientific
i nquiry?

Jack Andraka: So up until I got into the lab, all of my procedure was made on – all of
my ideas were my own and so but I really think that we should allow kids to do more
hands on activities designed on experiment . Science fair is a great step in the right
direction but I think we should really integrate that into our class rooms a lot more
because s cience isn’t just being a regurgitation of facts, it’s about exploring and like

fast line your curiosity. And I think by showing kids that, that’s what really is then
we’ll have a lot more interest in the field.

Mark Masselli: You know Jack at the healt h Centre we have a saying that we’re sort
of thing at the garage phase of innovation but actually you conducted most of your
research since early childhood in your parent kitchen. Then you will later got into the
basement where you and your brother were s end after some pretty risky
experiment s were conducted an d I believe once any rule, it's your home, maybe your
mom ’ s or your dad ’s says don’t burn down the house, you knew this cancer
detection experiment need ed to be conducted though in legitimate labs if you are
going to be able to take it to the phase. So tell our listeners how, how you win about
finding a reputable lab that would work with you to explore sort of your untested
scientific theories and the sort of rejections that you experience and ultima tely the
collaboration that you came upon?

Jack Andraka: So once I got this idea in my bio class, I essentially wrote up 32 page
– document, outline d my procedure, data like everything and then emailed it actually
to 200 different professors at John Hopk ins University and the National Institute if
Health and I got this email from going to the entire faculty directory and find ing
people s who research interest were pancreatic cancers so I sent out those 200
email s asking if I cud work in their lab and I got a 199 rejections and finally I got in to
one lab, I got – a maybe from Dr. Anuran Maître of John Hopkins University.
Essentially he said o kay you can come in for a short interview so I go in and an hour
later after getting furiously i nterrogated by him and his postdoctoral students, I finally
got the lab says ( 10:42 inaudible) then I could start doing work and then seven
months later I came up with this one small paper ( 10:49 inaudible) that cost three
cents and take 5 minutes to run.

M argaret Flinter: So Jack for sure you have made a n incredible discovery,
innovation for all of us who are clinicians that have seen the tragedy of late stage
diagnoses of ovarian and pancreatic cancer. Obviously the benefit is huge. But to
get in to mai nstream clinical practices to be consider ed from inclusion on the US
Preventive Services Taskforce or to be consider the gold standard for screening as
you know is another whole discipline in some w ay s, may be you could tell us little bit
about your journey since making the hard science breakthrough, what’s the path to
actually bringing it to fruition in the world of people in h ealth care?

Jack Andraka: So currently how we are going about this is I have this the
international patent on the technology and I am in talk s with several large bio tech
companies about getting it out in market as soon as possible and essentially what is
going to be happening is we are going to be licensing it to one of those comp anies
hopefully and then they we’ ll take it to the mar ket and how it’s really go ing to play out
in the regulatory process is we are probably going to register it as a medical device
because that’s a much shorter approval process than say like a drug for example.
Drugs take forever to get through the regulatory process while these medical devices
can take as short as 2 years however with mine it’ll probably be at least 5 to 10 years
before we see it on the market.

Mark Masselli: We are speaking today with Jac k Andraka, 16 year old inventor,
scientist and Cancer researcher. He is recipient of the 2012 Gordon E. Moore

Award , the grand prize of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his
work in developing a new rapid and inexpensive method for d etecting early stage
pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancer. Mr. Andraka is also leading the only teen team
entering in the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE competition seeking to
develop wireless diagnostic technologies that will put health care monitoring power in
the consumer’s ha nds. So Jack, tell us a little bit about your team, you are up
against 300 well - funded scientific teams to win the X PRIZE competition. So we
would love to hear more about your team it’s called Gen Z , I think it is and in your
approach to this challenge and what sort of advantages have growing up with
technologies digital data have given your team over researchers that who found their
skills before the advent of the internet. Do you think it ’s going to give you an edge
on it or all hands on deck , it’s go ing to be a very tough competition?

Jack Andraka: Well of course it’s goi ng be a tough competition there, 300 of the best
and braised teams from around the world competing for this $ 10 million prize.
However I think my team has a really good chance abou t getting in to the finals and
so my team is constructed of all teenagers and we’re from all over the world and
right now we have 5 team members and we are currently refining all technologies
and so I think really that our advantage that my team has comes from the fact that
we all are teens and we grew up with those technology but also because we are
young , w e really haven’t been kind of pigeon holding to a certain way of thinking
because when you stay in a field for a bit too long, you might begin to start thinking
in this one certain way and outsiders look at a problem can often lead to great
solutions I mean like when I began this project I had no clue what a pancreas was?
And I was able to develop a new way to detect pancreatic cancer and that’s why I
r eally t hink that my team has going for, we don’t have any degrees and we really
have no formal education in this field however we are going to give it a shot and see
what we can do.

Mark Masselli: Do you have a website that people can follow you at – on that?

Jack Andraka: So right now we are trying to create website however you can follow
me at @Jackandraka on Twitter to get updates on it, as well as my Face book page
Jack A ndraka.

Margaret Flinter: You said that your accomplishmen t was really no big deal. There’s
millions of potentially ground breaking innovators and scientists around the world
who are ready to make similar breakthroughs if they only had access to open source
scientific papers. Now, I don't know if you are speaking of the experience that many
of us who do research have had if you read an incredible abstract that you found in
PubMed and you go looking for the full article only to find out its proprietary and
there's a $45 fee or $50 fee which certainly when you are looking at hundreds of
articles can add up and you noted that your quest for search data was really cost
prohibited for you and reveal ed the presence of a scientific data aristocracy. What
did you mean by that and as you think about creating the future for yourself and
othe rs as scientist? What would you like to see done about that?

Jack Andraka: Yeah, so over the course of this process, that’s one of the greatest
adversities was actually these scientific papers because you see I am 15 years old, I
don't have that much mon ey so it was really hard to get access to a lot of the articles

I need ed and because of that inhibitive cost , it really prevented me from doing some
of the research that I really needed to do. And I think this is all true for pretty much
all young scienti sts is that we simply don't have the money to afford these articles.
So, really we’ve kind of created this barrier between the youth and science because
a (Inaudible 16:13 ) is 99 cents but some of the science articles are $35 , we see all
these big some in itiative but when that's there I mean that's a bit of mixed message
as our priorit ies because I think that by opening sc ientific data, this will really help
everyone b ecause recently Harvard’s dated, well we simply can't afford continuing a
lot of our subs criptions because they have become so expensive . And that's going
to inhibit a lot of life saving and potentially ground breaking research and I don't think
that we should segregate research because ideas don't discriminate who they come
to so why should we discriminate who we ’ re giving knowledge to.

Mark Masselli: Wondering, you know as a 15 year old how do you make things more
accessible in the science world but for some people they are just trying to find the
door handle? So, what are some advices that you might give to your brothers of
your age, the Gen Z crowd in terms of ways to start thinking about science or get
engage?

Jack Andraka: I think the best way to really get interested into science is get hand s
on so just do some experiments. I mean they are actually really fun because
science isn’t about coming up with life saving treatme nts and stuff, that's a by - product
of science but science is really satisfy ing your curiosity. And you never know the
result of a science big experiment, you just trying to see if your hypothesis will be
true. And some of the great scientist discoveries have been found when your
hypothesis has actually false . So, I think that by realizing that’s okay to fail in
science and that by just starting to do scientific experiments people will really begin
to see that science is a lot more fun than a lot of the public thinks that it is.

Margaret Flinter: Well Jack I think one of the f un, exciting, rewarding elements of
making breakthroughs is that you get to then begi n to build upon that work and to
pull the thread, go back. So, I am curious where would you think your work will take
you as you think about this, does it lead you to wan t to go further upstream in terms
of genetics or prevention even earlier detection, does it make you want to go further
downstream to better treatment modalities, where do you see yourself continuing to
do your work?

Jack Andraka: So, currently I'm just focusing on the Tricorder X PRIZE and in terms
of my future plans I really have no clue what I’m going to do when I grow up and so
it’s all open questions for me but I guess I have a bit time to decide.

Mark Masselli: We have been s peaking today with Jac k Andraka, 16 year old
inventor, scientist and cancer researcher, recipient of the 2012 Gordon E. Moore
Award , grand price of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his
work in developing a new rapid and inexpensive method for detecting e arly stage
pancreatic cancer. You can learn more about his work by going to jackandraka.net
that's andraka.net. Jack looking forward to more of your success and thank you so
much for joining us today on Conversations on Health Care .

Jack Andraka: Thank s for having me.

(Music)

Mark Masselli: At conversations on health care we want our audience to be truly in
the know when it comes to the facts about health care reform and policy. Lori
Robertson is an award winning journalist and Managing Editor of Fa ctCheck.org, a
nonpartisan, non - profit consumer advocate for voters that aim to reduce the level of
deception in US politics. Lori what have you got for us this week?

Lori Robertson: Well, several readers have asked us whether the Affordable Care
Act restricts insurance coverage of Mammography. The answer is no. In fact, the
law requires in sure r s to cover mammograms without a ny cost sharing, every one to
two yea rs for women starting at age 40, for women with Medicare the law increased
coverage. Medicare now fully pay a three yearly m ammograms stating a date 40.
Despite what some of our rea ders may have heard, there is not cut off or upper age
limit for m ammograms to be covered through Medicare. We call ed the American
Cancer Society, the nonprof it Medicaid Rights Center and the American Geriatric
Society and no ne had heard of any issues or complaints of seniors being denied
m ammograms . At lea st, some of the claims are misinterpretations of 2009
recommendations from the U S Preventive Services Tas kforce. The Task force is a
volunteer panel of primary care physicians and preventive medicine experts . They
may be controversial recommendation that by any old m ammography screening
should begi n at age 50. For women younger than 50 the panel said that d ecision to
have a m ammogram was an individual choice. For women 75 and older the panel
said evidence wasn’t available to determine benefits versus harms . The panel did
not say that women under 50 or over 50 shouldn’t get m ammograms at all . The 2009
recomm endation were rejected by some cancer groups and they were specifically
rejected by the Affordable Care Act which again requires full coverage of
m ammograms as a Standard Preventive Benefit start in g a t age 40. And that’s my
FactCheck for this week . I am Loir Robertson, Managing Editor of F act C heck . org

Margaret Flinter: FactC heck.org is committed to factual accuracy from the country’s
major political players and is a project of Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the
University of Pennsylvania. If you have a fact that you’d like to check email us at
CHCRadio . com, w e’ll have F act C heck.org’s Lori Robertso n check it out for you here
on Conversations on Health Care.

( Music )

Margaret Flinter: Each week conversation highlights a bright idea about h ow to
make wellness a part of our communities and everyday lives . Smoking continues to
be the number one preventable cause of premature death in this country, leading to
over 440,000 dea ths per year and while quitting remains a challenge to most
smokers, the Tobacco Industry continues to spend billions of dollars of promotion in
law being . A new study release d by the International Tobacco Control Policy
Evaluation Project shows that putting graphic warning label on the outside of
cigarette packs leads to significant reduction in the number of smokers.

Dr. Jeffrey Fong : In the late 90s there was concerted efforts to really put the graphic
images of what it’s really like t o get a smoking related disease, on to warning labels.

Margaret Flinter: Dr. Jeffrey Fong of the University of Waterloo in Canada
conducted the study, analyzing Canada smoking cessation rates from the year 2000,
when Canada began ordering that a third of the cigarette pack be reserved for
graphic images of disease d, hurts, and black en lungs through 2009. The data
show ed a mark decrease in the num ber of smokers during that time, attributed
largely to the presence of the graphic images in conjunction with strict smoking laws .

Dr. Jeffrey Fong : We exam ined the period of time in Canada, a nine years four of
the graphic warning labels came out and then compare d it to the nine afterwa rds and
what we found was there was a sharp decline in the smoking rates after the one in
labels compare d to before and we compare d it to that same per iod of time in the
United States and it show ed that the decline in smoking rates after the warning
labels in Canada were much greater than for that same period of time in Untied
States where there was no change.

Margaret Flinter: D r . Fong noted that when the FDA was given a directive to initiate
policies that would lead to decrease d smoking rates , it was given in conclusive data
on the effectiveness of the use of such graphic images on cigarette s sold in America.
So, the practice was not initiated here an d he thinks that was a missed opportunity.
Based on the Canadian number Fong and his college estimate that a similar
program in the US would leads you a d rama tic reduction in the number of smokers
here as has been shown in Canada and the other countries a round the world who’ve
initiated the similar practice.

Dr. Jeffrey Fong : In 2012 the smoking rates was about 2 3% in United States and so,
if you reduce that percentage by 12 and 20 % you get between 5.3 and 8.6 million
fewer smokers in United Stated if t hey were to apply graphic warning labels of the
type that Canada put out.

Margaret Flinter: Placing graphic images of body parts that have been damaged
diseased by smoking providing a visual to turn into regu lar smokers and to graphic
visual warning to y oung people considering smoking, something that could be
potentially lead a millions of Americans quitting and very likely prolonging their lives,
now that’s a bright idea.

Margaret Flinter: This is Conversations on Health Care. I'm Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli : And I am Mark Masselli , peace and health.

(Music)

Conversations on Health Care, broadcast from the campus of WESU at Wesleyan
University , streaming live at wesufm.org and brought to you by the community health
center.