“You know what, it’s such a good idea that I believe that even if I don’t do it, if I just get the word out, somebody else will do it. That’s really all that matters.”
Driving to work today, I heard a remarkable story on NPR. It was about a scientist, Brian Shaw, who was working on software to detect a rare form of eye cancer, retinoblastoma. Usually, when you hear stories about scientists building incredible diagnostic tools, that’s inspirational enough. But, this story stood out because it wasn’t about getting rich or famous. Brian wanted to give it away for free and his vision was for everyone to have access to it.
Brian’s son, Noah, was diagnosed with retinoblastoma at the age of 4 months. When he was diagnosed, all Brian could think about was keeping his son alive – taking him to chemotherapy and supporting him during the excision of his son’s eye. Afterwards, when Brian learned more about the disease, he found out you can detect this form of cancer through photographs. When you take a flash photo, instead of red dots in peoples’ eyes, you see a white reflection. After going through thousands of photos, he discovered that his son had tumors behind his eyes at 12 days old. He was besides himself that he could have gotten treatment for his son sooner.
The crazy thing is, instead of just settling with the knowledge that his son was very unlucky, he switched from being an inorganic chemist to software engineer (I guess you need brilliance for both, but this seriously takes skill), and started to develop a program that could assess photos to catch retinoblastoma earlier on. He decided that he didn’t want other children to suffer the same fate as Noah.
“I would like this software to be free. I’d like this to be everywhere there’s a kid.”
The show goes on to debate the efficacy and potential suffering that may arise from overly anxious parents using Brian’s software and freaking out from false positives, but I was stumped mostly with his last comment. When the reporter asked him what would happen if someone else beat him to it, Brian laughed. He said:
“You know what, it’s such a good idea that I believe that even if I don’t do it, if I just get the word out, somebody else will do it. That’s really all that matters.”
In buddhism, generosity is meant to be the act of giving or serving utterly and completely with no expectation of reward. For example, if you give something to a homeless man and you then wonder if he spent it on drugs, you haven’t really given the money. If you’ve truly given it, you should no longer wonder about it. Brian switched his profession and dedicated himself entirely to the act of giving. When all you want to do is to help people and in this case, prevent them from ever feeling the pain you felt, it doesn’t matter if you have competitors or if someone beats you to it. It only matters if it gets done. I wish that more non profits and other humanitarian efforts followed this philosophy.
While Brian is Christian and he voices the involvement of his religious faith, I don’t believe his story is focused on religion. It’s focused on turning pain into happiness for oneself and for others. I loved his story and this quote. It inspired me to remember how to give and the absolute freedom it gives your heart and soul when you do it.
To read more: Faith Drives a Father to Create a Test for Childhood Cancer
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