“Yes, sir?” He called on Michael Hennessey in the last row.
“Dr. Hayes, is it possible? Can we really do what they’re asking?”
“That’s a good question,” he answered. “It depends. If you’re asking if we, or someone on our team, can come up with the magic bullet to kill cancer, probably not. But there is nothing to say that the delivery of a drug couldn’t be formulated to attack the cancer itself.
“Yes, Jill?” He motioned to Jill Weber, one of his prize students. “Is it possible for us to work on something like this as a class or
maybe a side project?”
“Sounds like you could use three billion dollars, huh, Jill?” he
kidded. The class broke out into laughter.
“So could I!” a voice bellowed from the back of the lab.
“No, Dr. Hayes,” she said with a furrowed brow. “I just lost my grandfather to cancer, and I can’t think of a better way to honor him than to have a hand in trying stopping it.”
Everyone went silent, looking at Dr. Hayes.
“You know, guys, sometimes I’m asked why I teach. Well, it’s
because of you.”
He gazed his students. Each one seemed eager to help, to be a part of something larger than themselves. He admired that, but big dreams required sobering truth.
“Can we do a side project. Maybe. Probably. But I’m not being a good professor if I don’t level with. The discovery of new treatments and cures seldom come by accident or part time work. The odds of us discovering a cancer cure is slim.”
He paced for a moment or two. “Still,” he said, “we can at least give it some thought. At the very least, we might learn a few things. “Sometime,” he continued, “I look at my students and wonder what great things you might achieve in the years ahead. Could the cure for cancer be in a young person’s mind right now? Maybe. It may be something that has never been tried, a combination of science and math, or pure luck. But it’s the passion for helping a fellow human being that will make a cure happen. What better way to honor the ones we love than to stop a disease that threatens so many lives? Remember, there are twelve million people living with cancer at any point in time in the United States. Some of them will