杜克博士为什么跑来全职做公益 | 李治中 | TEDxDukeKunshanU

It is a great honor to be here
at Duke Kunshan University.

It feels like returning to my alma mater.

It’s the first time I’ve felt like
I’ve returned to

my old school since
graduating from Duke.

I haven’t got a chance
to revisit the Duke campus.

Today, I’m honored to be here.

I’d like to share with you
what I’m doing now.

Today’s theme is “Exploration.”

I want to tell you that we’re exploring

on the path of public
welfare 2.0 in China.

So the title of my speech is
“Why a Duke Ph.D. holder

would work in public welfare."

This is a decision that might
seem very odd to many people.

I hope that after today's speech,
more Duke students

can join in and do something that
seems like deviating from your proper work.

In fact, the first half of my
experience is very straightforward,

a typical experience of a
so-called straight-A student.

After graduating from high school,
I went to college, to Tsinghua University

and then successfully got
accepted to Duke.

At Duke, I spent less
than four years to get my Ph.D.

Many people might think,
as things went so well,

I should go into academics,
like Prof. Haiyan Gao,

to become a good professor in the future.

But at that time,
for personal reasons,

I chose to join Novartis Pharmaceuticals,
because my dream has always

been in developing new cancer drugs.

I went to Duke to study because
my mother had breast cancer.

Otherwise,
I would definitely do something else.

So, my dream has always been the same.

I later worked in research
and pop science.

All are actually related
to this experience.

Many people might wonder why,
in 2018, I wrote an article titled

“I quit my job on the first day of
Chinese New Year and returned to China

with my whole family to work
in public welfare.”

Why did I do it?

Today, I will share with
you the story behind it.

First, let me introduce
to you this little girl.

We’ll call her Little Li
for privacy reasons.

Little Li is a very cute girl
about 1 year old.

One day, her parents noticed
she was squinting her eyes.

They were very worried and took her
to the county hospital for an examination.

The doctor said she had probably
played too much with a mobile phone.

It doesn’t matter, he said.

You should go back and wait three months

before coming back for
another examination.

So, they waited.

Three months later,

a tumor had already grown in her eyes.

This time, her parents took
Little Li to the provincial hospital.

The doctors told them
they had no clue how to treat the girl,

and suggested they go
to Beijing for treatment.

So, they went to Beijing.

Due to the long journey and delay,
the girl developed a serious infection.

As a result,
she couldn’t receive immediate treatment.

The infection needed to be treated first.

It was 22 days later when she finally
received any medicine to treat her cancer.

The last time I saw Little Li,

both her eyes had been removed
because of retinoblastoma,

a very rare but potentially
very malignant tumor of the eyes.

Her father sent this photo to me

and urged me to tell everyone
about their experience.

Her father is in the army.

After Little Li was born,
her father joined the army.

When he returned home,
his daughter’s eyes were gone.

This is the problem that we have to solve.

There are 40,000 children
like Little Li in China.

Some 40,000 children
get cancer every year.

Although the public believe
that cancer is a geriatric disease,

many children get cancer too.

The vast majority of children
with cancer are misdiagnosed in China,

because of information asymmetry

and because parents have
no awareness of childhood cancers.

From all of you here,
I believe barely anyone really knows

what childhood cancer is,

what types of cancer children get,

what hospitals they can go to for treatment,

and what drugs to use.

Almost none.

I hope that after my speech today,

you will have some ideas
about childhood cancer

and how we are promoting awareness
through public welfare projects.

For any parents who have just
learned that their child has cancer,

they must be very scared
and feel very helpless.

They will have many, many questions,

such as what the disease is exactly?

Which hospital is the best?

Why does my child has cancer?

And can we have a second child?

These are very practical questions.

But before,
in China,

no one was able to answer these questions.

When you go to a hospital,

the doctors have no time
to answer these questions.

Why did tragedies like Little Li’s happen?

Why do these parents feel so helpless?

It is because of the missing of
professional information

in this area in China.

If we are in the United States, at Duke,

we’d use Google to search

“pediatric cancer” or “childhood cancer”,

we’d find a lot of very professional
and systematic pop

science materials that
give answers to all these questions.

But, before I returned,

if you searched for keywords

such as “child cancer” in China,

the first results to come up would be:

“Why do children get cancer?

Mostly because of their mothers.”

And there are all kinds of advertisements.

This is the problem parents are facing.

They not only have to face the shock
of the disease and their child's illness,

but also the stress of not being able
to find any reliable information.

This is what we want to do.

The survival rate of childhood cancer in
China is much lower than that in the U.S.,

although the overall figure is very good.

Childhood cancer survival is
much better than that of adults.

But there is a 20 percent gap between China and the U.S.

Why?

Not because of new drugs,

as there are few new
drugs for child cancers.

Later, I will talk about some
latest developments in new drugs.

But as a whole,

there are few new drugs for

conventional treatment,

just surgery,

chemotherapy,

radiotherapy

and bone marrow transplantation.

The treatment in China
and the U.S. is the same.

So where is the gap?

Children in China are usually delayed

until a very late stage
in seeking hospital treatment.

This is the gap.

What we need to do is not develop new drugs.

We only need to provide information;

to close the information gap
between China and the U.S.

It is then possible to save the
8,000 children every year

as I just mentioned,
20 percent of 40,000

who die just because they live in China.

I returned to China and created Curekids,

an information website
for childhood cancers.

The first thing we have to do
is establish a professional,

accurate and timely pop science matrix.

We first set up a website called Curekids,

the most important function of

which is to be a “children’s
anti-cancer encyclopedia.”

For this website, we mobilized
nearly 200 Chinese Ph.D. holders

and M.D.s, people like me,

to translate all the materials
we can find abroad.

We also asked top doctors in China to
create lots of original information for us.

Now the website has almost 1 million
words of professional information,

covering almost all mainstream
types of childhood cancer.

At the same time, we have
our WeChat official account.

After a year of operation, the
account has 250,000 subscribers.

We upload articles every day,

all of which are systematic
introductions to childhood cancers.

How to diagnose?

How should it be treated?

What are the side effects of the treatment?

How to eat after recovery?

How to recheck after recovery?

What new drugs are available abroad?

All of these questions.

We update professional
information every day.

Now I find that not only parents
are using the information,

but many doctors –especially
doctors at the grassroots level

are actually learning the knowledge
through our WeChat account.

We have made several pamphlets,

including the Sunflower Family Handbook,

which is a systematic
introduction to childhood cancer.

There is also a COG
Handbook for the Newly Diagnosed,

which tells parents what to do
if their child is diagnosed with cancer.

There are handbooks about
particular types of cancer,

such as retinoblastoma,
the tumor in the eyes of Little Li,

whom I mentioned just now.

How should it be treated?

Where to go for treatment?

Is it possible to keep the eyes?

Neuroblastoma,
a common malignant tumor in children.

We have just made the first handbook about
this disease and distributed 3,500 copies

to more than a dozen
hospitals in various parts of China,

as well as many public
welfare organizations.

The handbooks were quickly snapped up.

Now many organizations have proactively
approached us for such information.

Only then did we discover that
what we do is really very meaningful

by providing all kinds
of professional information.

We have offline lectures.

We have invited top pediatric
oncologists in China to give lectures.

We also videotape the lectures,
just like today's TEDx,

so that parents from across China and
around the world don’t have to go to

Beijing, Shanghai or Tianjin to listen
to top experts explaining the disease.

We also have an interactive platform,

so parents can post
questions and get answers.

Of course, it’s very important
that we have a Tiktok account.

We also have Kuaishou
and Bilibili accounts.

We’re using every media outlet you can
imagine to penetrate into all social groups,

because childhood cancer is not related
to a family’s financial circumstances.

It is not that you are more likely
to come across childhood cancer

because of your income
level or your education level.

It is pure probability.

It is possible for parents of any education
level to find their child diagnosed with cancer.

So, when disseminating
professional information,

we need very comprehensive coverage.

Today, I also want to tell you about

somecommon misconceptions
about childhood cancer.

In addition to parents,

we also offer share information to the general public.

First, many people think that
childhood cancer cannot be cured,

because we have watched too many TV shows.

When we hear leukemia, we think of death.

You may not know that
there are more than 1,000 TV shows

or movies in China in which both male and
female protagonists have died of leukemia.

We are subconsciously influenced to think
of leukemia as an incurable disease.

In fact, leukemia treatment is one
of the most effective ones.

The survival rate of leukemia
among childhood cancer patients

exceeds 90 percent!

This is a seemingly very ordinary
photo of a group of college students.

But in fact they are not at all ordinary.

What’s so remarkable about them?

All of them have recovered from leukemia.

They used to be hospital patients,

but now they are all college students.

Not only child cancer can be cured,

but young patients can fully
recover and return to normal life,

return to school, and
become very useful to society.

This is very important,

because many rural parents
give up treatment immediately

when they learn about
their child’s disease,

as they believe their son or daughter will
still be a burden even if they are cured.

We need pop science,

we need such communications,

to build confidence.

Many people think that childhood cancer
is a just a smaller adult tumor,

just use half of the medicine for adults
on child patients should be alright.

This is totally wrong.

Childhood cancer is a completely different
disease from adult cancer in biology,

like hepatitis B and hepatitis C
are completely different diseases.

No matter what cancer
type or gene mutation,

childhood cancer is very special.

Among the childhood cancers diagnosed,

leukemia takes up one-third.

About one-fourth are brain tumors,

10 percent are lymphoma,

and the rest are various solid tumors,

some of which you might have never heard of.

There’s retinoblastoma,
which I just talked about,

neuroblastoma, hepatoblastoma
and nephroblastoma.

There are a lot of tumors of various kinds

many of which have
never been found in adults.

Gene mutation is also different.

Many gene mutations
in adults are associated

with their environment
and long-term lifestyle,

while most gene mutations in children
are caused by congenital factors

and mutations in
development-related genes.

That is why children
develop tumors so early in life.

Treatment of childhood
cancer is also very different.

Let me show you a picture
that might be very scary.

This is called infantile fibrosarcoma.

It grows on four limbs,
and very small children might get it.

This kind of fibrosarcoma
can usually be cured by

chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy.

The overall therapeutic
effect is very good.

But some of the patients,

like this child,

are drug-resistant.

For such children,

the only treatment,

or the only hope,

is amputation.

We need to develop new
drugs for these children.

These diseases do not happen to adults,

so we need to do it only for children.

You should understand

how the disease happens

and how to treat it.

It was later discovered that these
children had specific gene mutations,

for example,

some of them had TRK mutations.

Then, with such information,

the pharmaceutical companies
have developed targeted drugs

specifically to block cancer
cells with this mutation,

resulting in a miracle for these children.

This is another child
suffering from this disease.

He has a very large
tumor growing in his joint.

Previously, such a child,
like I said just now,

either gives up treatment or goes through
amputation and sees how it goes.

Even amputation might not work,

as surgeons cannot remove the tumor.

With the new drug, the tumor
was controlled after two or three cycles.

It didn’t completely disappear,

but then the surgeon could
do a very clean resection to cut it off.

This is the power of new drugs.

This is Emily, the most famous
leukemia child patient in the world.

She almost died and
directly gave up treatment.

But she came across CAR-T immunotherapy.

She became the first little girl
in the world to try this treatment.

As a result, it took her
one and a half months to go

from being near-death
to being fit enough to return to school.

This is her picture one year later.

This is a child who almost died and got
everything back thanks to the new drugs.

But it took 30 years
to develop this new drug.

Scientists spent 30 years developing it.

This is her picture from last year.

Every year she takes a photo of herself,
which is very inspiring.

There are also new drugs for anti-GD2
immunotherapy to treat neuroblastoma,

which can save lives and
greatly improve the survival rate

for many late-stage
and severely ill children.

But what is the problem?

This medicine has not entered into China.

At present, Chinese
parents have only two options:

Going to Spain and spend
RMB 2 million a year or

go to the U.S. for RMB 3 million a year.

For Chinese parents,
this is a cruel reality.

You know you need to have money.

We all say life is priceless,

but at this time,

your life can be valued with a number.

You can go for treatment
if you have RMB 2 million

or you can only wait
in China if you don’t.

That is what we,

as a public welfare
organization, are doing.

In addition to disseminating
pop science knowledge,

we’re doing a lot of
transformational medicine.

We hope to introduce
anti-GD2 immunotherapy to China,

which is the most
important task for this year,

so that Chinese parents
can use it in China.

Even if the price can
be reduced to RMB 200,000,

I think it will bring hope
to more Chinese parents.