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Feb 4, 2007

"To be the agent whose touch changes nature from a wild force to a work of art is inspiration of the highest order." --Bob Rodale

A 17-year-old's Life-saving Breakthrough

In what could be a life-saving breakthrough, 17-year-old high school student Madhavi Gavini has found a way to defeat the Pseudomonas bacteria, which, in addition to killing people with cystic fibrosis, can cause deadly secondary infections under immune-suppressing conditions. To find a way through the bacterium's shield, the young scientist turned to Ayurvedic medicine, the traditional Indian healing technique. She isolated the molecule in a common tropical plant that was able to inhibit bacterial growth, and found it to be heat and pressure resistant. "It kills the cell," she explains, "by preventing the transcription of the genes involved in energy, metabolism, adaptation, membrane transport, and toxin secretion." While Madhavi could become a millionaire by patenting her work, she has something else in mind: making it openly available by publishing it, and allowing anybody to manufacture it.