哈弗畢業典禮致辭

哈弗畢業典禮致辭

蜘蛛軼事 何江

當我在上中學的時候，一次被一只有毒的蜘蛛咬了一口，我哭著跑向母親求助。然而母親并沒有領著我去看醫生，相反，她點燃了我的手。她將我的手用浸過白酒的棉布摩擦包扎之后，在我的嘴巴里塞進一支筷子讓我咬著，然后就點著了棉布。

熱量快速地穿過棉布直擊我的皮膚，烘烤著我的手背。這種撕心裂肺的疼痛讓我想要尖叫，但是卻叫不出聲，因為嘴里還咬著筷子。我所能做的只有盯著我的手看，一分鐘，兩分鐘，直到母親吹滅了火。

你可以看出我所成長的地方，一個中國的小村莊，在那個時候，還未工業化。當我出生的時候，我的村莊里還沒有汽車，沒有電話，沒有電力，甚至沒有自來水，更不用提現代化的醫療資源。在那里沒有母親可以領著我去看我被蜘蛛咬傷的傷口的醫生。

對于那些學習生物的學生，你們或許已經看出來了我母親這種民間療法的科學依據：熱量使蛋白質失活，而蜘蛛的毒液充斥著蛋白質。很厲害吧?這種民間療法怎么會和現代科學這么契合，不是嗎?但作為一個哈佛生物化學方向的博士生，我現在知道了一個更好的、疼痛更少、風險更小的療法。

所以，我不禁問我自己，為什么我那個時候沒有得到這樣的治療呢?這件事已經過去15年了，我可以很開心地向你們報告，我的手完好無損。但是那個問題依舊縈繞在我的腦海里，科學知識在世界上不均衡分布的問題也持續困擾著我。

我們學會了編輯人類的基因譜，揭示了許多有關癌癥的秘密，我們可以輕易操縱神經元的活動，每年我們在生物化學領域都有著無數進步和成就。然而，我們卻沒有成功地將這些我們已有的知識傳遞給那些最需要它們的地方。

每年有12%的人口每天僅靠不足2美元生活，每年有300萬兒童死于營養不良，全球有3億人受到瘧疾的侵擾。我們持續地看到貧困、疾病，和資源匱乏阻礙著科學的傳播。那些我們習以為常，救人于水火之中的知識在那些欠發達地區非常匱乏，所以直至今日都還有人用火燒來治療被蜘蛛咬下的傷口。

當我在哈佛學習時，我徹底明白了科學知識是怎樣以一種簡單卻深刻的方式幫助他人的。2000年流感暴發，我的故鄉像被魔鬼下了咒語一樣一蹶不振，民間醫術根本難以找到治療方法。農民們不知道流感與普通感冒的差別，他們更不知道流感遠遠比普通感冒致死率高，他們中的絕大多數人不了解病毒是可以在牲畜之間傳播的。

所以當我第一次了解到簡單的衛生操作，比如隔離不同的牲畜可以幫助限制疾病，能夠幫助我的故鄉更便捷地獲得這類知識的時候，我對我所從事行業的職業觀念的理解有了一次重大轉折，這也改變了我作為地球村一員的自我理解。

哈佛鼓勵我們去夢想，去渴望，去改變世界。今天在畢業典禮上，我們是應該去考慮宏偉的目標，但對我來說，我也關心我故鄉的村民們。

我的經歷提醒著我，研究者們傳遞自己的知識給需要的人有多么重要。有了科學，我們可以將成千上萬像我故鄉一樣的地區拉進這個我們已經習以為常的世界，這，是我們每個人都可以做的一件事。但問題是，我們是否愿意為此努力?

改變世界不代表每個人都要去發現什么偉大的東西，簡單地成為一個傳遞者，把我們已有的知識帶給這個地球村里無數像我母親一樣的人，就已經很好。

我們的社會應該消滅知識鴻溝，這是人類進步不可或缺的一步，需要我們來實現。如果我們行動了，興許再有來自中國偏遠地區的小男孩，當他被蜘蛛咬的時候，他會知道去看醫生，而不是用火燒他的手。

謝謝!

Commencement Speechby

JIANG HE

When I was in middle school, a poisonous spider bit my right hand. I ran to my mom for help, but instead of taking to a doctor, my Mom set my hand on fire. After rubbing my hand with several mares of cotton then soaked in wine,she put a chopstick into my mouth and ignited the cotton。

Heat quickly penetrated the cotton and began to roast my hand. The searing pain made me want to scream but the chopstick prevented it. All I could do was watch my hand bone, one minute, then two minutes, until my mom put off the fire。

You see the Public China I grew up in was a rural village, and at that time, pre industrial. When I was born, my village had no cars, no telephones, no electricity, not even running water and we certainly didn’t had access to the modern medical resources。

There was no doctor my mother could bring me to see about this spider bite. For those who study Biology, you may have brought the science behind my mom’s cure: heat deactivates proteins and the spider venom is full of protein. It’s cool how could this folk remedy incorporate with the base of biochemistry, isn’t it?

But I am a Ph.D student in Biochemistry study at Harvard, I now know a better, less painful and less risky treatment existed. So, I can’t help but ask myself, why I did’t receive one at that time?

Fifteen years have passed since that incident, I am happy to report that my hand is fine. But this question lingers and I continued to be troubled by the unequal distribution of scientific knowledge throughout the world。

We have learn to edit the human geneal and uncover many secrets of how cancer progressing. We can manipulate neuron activity literally with the switch of light. Each year with more advances in Biomedical research, exciting transformative accomplishment。

Yet despite the knowledge we had on that, we haven’t be so successful deploying it to where need it most. According to the World Bank, 12% of world population lives on less than 2 dollars a day。

Malnutrition kills more than 3 millions children annually. Three hundred million people are afflicted by Malaria globally. All over the world, we constantly see the problem of poverty, illness and lack of resources impeding the flow scientific information。

Life-saving knowledge took for granted in our modern world is over-unavailable in the underdeveloped regions. And so, in far to many places, people are still essentially trying to cure a spider bite with fire。

While studying at Harvard, I saw how scientific knowledge can help others in simple, in profound ways. The burst through pandemic in 2000 took my village like a spell cast by demons。

Our folk medicine didn’t even have half-mattress offer. What’s more, farmers did not know the difference between the common cold and flu. They did not understand that the flu is much more lethal than common cold. Most of all are also unaware that the virus are transmitted by animal species。

So when I realize that simple hygiene practices like separate different animal species could help contain this kind of disease and that I could help this kind of knowledge available to my village。

That was my first "aha" moment as a bioscientist. But it was more than that: it was also a vital inflection point of my own ethical development, my own self-understanding as a member of global community。

Harvard dares us to dream big, to aspire, to change the world. Here on this Commencement Day, we are appropriate the thinking of grand destination that wait us 。

As for me, I am also thinking of the farmers in my village. My experience here reminds me how important it is for researchers to communicate our knowledges, to those who need it. Because by using the science we already have, we can proper my village and thousands like it into the world you and I take for granted every day and that’s an impact every one of us can made。

But the question is, will we make the effort , or not?

More than ever before, our society emphasized our science and innovation, but an equally important emphasis should on distributing the knowledge we had to those who needed。

Changing the world doesn’t mean that everyone should find the next big thing. It can be a simplest to become a better communicator and find more creative ways to pass on the knowledge we had, to people like my mom and farmers in the local communities。

Our society also need to recognize that the equal distribution of knowledge is a pivotal step to the human development and we will work to bring this into a reality。

And if we do that, then perhaps a teenager in rural China with a beat by a poisonous spider will no longer burn his hand but will know to see a doctor instead。

Thank you !

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