According to Uproxx, Science technology, engineering and math (STEM) with the help of a 22-year-old is shaping the culture of now, leading the fight against colon cancer while inspiring others to join in.
When you think of cancer in 2017, you think death sentence. If you hear it’s colon cancer, you’re thinking about of the worst cancers of them all. According to ccalliance, colon cancer is the the no. 2 killer among cancers in the United States. If detected later than in stage 1, the survival rate shrivels down to 15 percent. But, there may be a way to combat colon cancer in the form of Chicago native Kevin Stonewall, 22, who is on a quest to stop the disease.
At 19, Stonewall conducted research on a colon cancer vaccine thru a treatment called immunotherapy, revealing the vaccine’s effectiveness hinged on the age group it was given to. An age specific vaccine, Stonewall found this out running an experiment on a set of older and young mice, injecting a mitoxantrone type vaccine into each. He then shot both groups with aggressive colon cancer cells, and monitored them. After a few days, Stonewall found that the aggressive cells inside the young mice were completely gone while the older mice were still affected.
“He should be heralded for helping to develop more effective colon cancer treatments,” Carl Ruby, Rush University Professor who ran the lab where Stonewall conducted research. “Stonewall’s path to becoming a cancer researcher began in 5th grade.”
“I went to my teacher, and I kept asking like, ‘Okay, what do people do with microscopes? What can I do with a microscope?’” Stonewall said to uproxx. “Because the only time I’d seen a microscope was on TV and those scientists you know, Dexter’s Laboratory or all those different science TV shows.”
Stonewall then said he never saw scientists of color on television, this before Neil deGrasse Tyson was able to cross over into middle America.
“You didn’t see a black scientist,” Stonewall said to uproxx. “You probably saw your old white man with a white lab coat.”
To drive home that point, black men make up just three percent of scientists and engineers in STEM, according to a 2013 National Science Foundation study. In 2017, America has had its first African American President, for two terms, and was narrowly close to its first female one. Essentially, times are changing, slowly but surely. Things that were once not possible, becoming a black scientist, now takes just hard work and luck.
“It takes brave people willing to be different, and be different in the public to change convention.”
