A seven-year old is capable of many things like doing chores around the house or the basics like learning to read. They let their imagination run wild and spend their days pretending the swing set is a pirate’s ship.
Most seven year old children would even color outside the lines and wonder why the sky is blue and the grass is green.
Yes, at seven, you and I were also just developing our abilities to be logical. But there was one seven year old who was like no other. He was walking and talking when he was only 10 months old and later was discovered to have an IQ of 146, the highest of any seven year old in India. He was reading and writing by two. And, reading Shakespeare, in English, by the time he was five.
Akrit is now talking about his theories for oral gene therapy in the fight against cancer. He has been sponsored and mentored by Mr B. R. Rahi the Chairman of Secondary Education in Dharamshala.
The child surgeon is studying for a science degree at Chandigarh College. At twelve years of age, he is the youngest student ever accepted by an Indian University.
Akrit’s father left the family a year ago, depressed and exhausted. Trying to get the bureaucratic Indian Government to acknowledge his son’s intellect, took six long years. Without this acknowledgement he had little chance of securing funding for Akrit’s cancer research.
AKRIT’S JASWAL FIRST SURGERY
In a nearby village, a toddler burned her hand and the burns were so severe that her fingers curled up and the skin on her fingers melted together. Due to her family’s poverty she was never operated on and for years, the little girl’s hand was of no use.
By now, Akrit Jaswal had already earned a reputation in his village for being the medical genius and at the age of eight, her family sought out Akrit Jaswal to operate on their daughter. So they traveled over to Jaswal’s village for help.
After signing a waiver, Jaswal agreed to do the surgery free of charge. The following weeks, his parents ordered surgical knives, camera equipment, and anesthesia for the occasion. On November 19, 2000, Jaswal performed his first surgery and separated the girl’s fingers for the first time after an hour long operation.
Jaswal’s parents documented the surgery and uploaded the footage online. Within days, their son was an Internet sensation and a few months later, Oprah Winfrey interviewed Akrit Jaswal in one of her “Little Genius”segments.
During his interview at Imperial College, Akrit Jaswal explains why he’s so passionate about medicine and focused on finding a cure for cancer.
He said, “I’ve been going to hospitals since the age of six, so I have seen firsthand people suffering from pain. I get very sad, and so that’s the main motive of my passion about medicine, my passion about cancer.”
Sixteen years after performing his first surgery, Akrit Jaswal has not given up on his dreams. He is learning more about chemistry, botany, zoology, biology, and bio engineering in order to find the cure for cancer some day soon.
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