I just came across the above speech given by Eva Vertes at the 2005 TED conference and was literally blown away.

At the age of 15, Eva began researching the impairment of the nervous system on fruit flies for a high school science fair project. In her abstract, Eva explained that when a patient is affected by Alzheimer's, neuron's in the brain are depleted rapidly due to cell death, which is often referred to as "apoptosis." Apoptosis is a type of cell death in which a series of molecular steps in a cell leads to its death. This is the body's normal way of getting rid of unneeded or abnormal cells.

Apoptosis is often triggered by beta-amyloid, a toxic protein fragment that accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer's patients. Eva theorized that preventing this form of apoptosis could potentially prevent the onslaught of Alzheimer's. In her research, she focused on certain properties of a compound called RPI-069. After a series of experiments, she tested her theory and demonstrated that the RPI-069 protein was able to reduce the apoptosis by an average of 60%. Eva's results were groundbreaking and could possibly lead to new therapies and potentially, a cure for Alzheimer's.

I was amazed by Eva for the obvious reasons: age 15, discovering potential cure for Alzheimer's, 1st place in international science competition, etc. But as I watched her speech, I loved her refreshness and her confidence in not having all the answers. Most importantly, I was inspired by her ability to look at scientific problems through a different lens.

What if we applied Eva's approach to caregiving and patient care?