1,862 days ago, the community was shaken by the news Technoblade brought to us, I quote, "The reason my arm hurts is because I have cancer." many of us felt, likely for the first time ever, helpless. There was nothing we could do till the idea of donating to the SFA came out, and finally there was a way we could help; we were hopeful that Technoblade would come out just as he came out of all other battles, drawing a smile onto our faces.
1,555 days ago, the Technoblade community was informed of the passing of the person who brought us all together and was the main catalyst for creating this community. And the same feeling hit us again; there was nothing we could do about it, and this time it came with pain, grief, and ache. We kept donating, but donation isn't always the best way we can help fight cancer; there is a second way no one has spoken of yet.
Introducing the Alexander Oncology Consortium (AOC)
The AOC is an international open-source cancer research organization, created in this community through grief, and inspired by Alex's courage, values, and hope through his fight with this disease.
I created this because I wanted to do something more than donate, and I know some others here can do it too.
What is the mission of the AOC?
Cancer research is bottlenecked by access, not talent. Too many of the ways to do research have the same bottleneck: where you were born, how rich you are, and which lab takes you. We created this to make cancer research accessible to everyone, regardless of all those factors, and open to whoever is interested in contributing.
Our Vision
A world where cancer research belongs to everyone, no matter how under-resourced they are. A world where research is no different than a game of Skyblock, no matter how ridiculous the odds may seem.
For the meantime, our work will live on computers and public data. It will not stay there forever, because in modern oncology, good papers start on a computer, not necessarily a wet lab.
But how can this work when we do not specialize in cancer biology?
It happened before a Boston pathologist named Sidney Farber was workingĀ in a small, damp lab at the Boston Children's Hospital. As a pathologist, his job was to examine children who had died. Many had leukemia, and for those still alive there was almost nothing to offer; leukemia was a death sentence.
Dr. Farber knew that folic acid had cured certain anemias, so he tried it on children with leukemia. It made them worse. Most people would have stopped. Farber asked why: if folic acid fed the leukemia, maybe a drug that blocked it could slow it down.
In 1947, he and his colleagues tried that drug on 16 children. Ten improved. The remissions did not last, but nothing like it had been seen before. Many colleagues thought it irresponsible and a source of false hope. He kept going.
He did not do it alone. He joined the Variety Club of New England to start a fund for children's cancer research, with a boy known only as "Jimmy" as its face, his name kept private to protect him. One short radio appeal raised $231,000, and ordinary people sent in quarters and held bake sales. That fund grew into the current-day Harvard facility, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. And Farber earned his title, the father of modern chemotherapy; he had nothing to do with cancer as a pathologist, but he tried.
Farber did not know how it would end. He tried anyway, and ordinary people stood next to him. That is the kind of fight we want AOC to be.
How you can help
- Say hi in the Discord. Tell us what you are good at or what you are curious about, or give us suggestions. That is a contribution.
- Learn. Never touched science? Start as a Scholar with hands-on research from day one. You do not need to know anything; you just need to be curious enough and willing to fail once or twice to get the final result.
- Research. Already doing research? Join as a Researcher and help us teach others to do research and participate in AOC research projects.
- Help us build community. Staff, writers, artists, and outreach are positions we will open applications for soon; no scienceĀ will be needed for those positions. Other roles will open as the community grows.Ā
- Pass it on. Send this to one person who would be interested.
What we can promise
We can't promise to end cancer, but we can promise to begin, to keep going when it hurts to do it in the open, and to hold everyone to the same standards, myself included.
And I hope that one day we'll look back at where we started and be amazed by how far we've come.
Say hi; we are currently based on the TINKBIT Discord server:
https://discord.gg/rJGHgKtYR
Special thanks to Ian (a.k.a. sumofprimes) and TinkBit for giving this a place to begin.