Pulkit Kumar and His Journey Thus Far
INTRODUCTION
Pulkit Kumar (known as Pulkit), is an Indian-born Canadian scientist from Alberta, Canada. He is known for his discoveries in the field of medicine and technology, which sometimes touch upon some of the most controversial issues. He aims to provide more effective treatments for the future, which challenges current treatments in all aspects. He also aims for net-zero carbon emission and also plans on creating clean and renewable energy resources, which will decrease the net carbon emission and will keep the average earth temperature in the ideal range.
He published a paper in May 2020, while touched upon the future of anti-depressants. The paper proposed an alternative treatment or a potential add-on, which in the previous studies was proven to be almost at the same level as the current treatments, with almost zero side effects, even when taken for a period of 7–10 years. This got a lot of attention since the proposed treatment costed almost nothing when compared to the billion-dollar medicinal industries. Later on, in October 2020, he published another paper that proposes the idea of using plant-based compounds for the treatment of cancer. Though he faced lots of challenges with this (since very little research has been done in this field), he took it upon himself to solidify his claims and to encourage more research in this direction.
EARLY LIFE
Pulkit Kumar was born on August 16, 1999 (age 21 years) in Mandi Gobindgarh, Punjab, India. He did his early schooling from a catholic school in New Delhi before his family moved to the UK and ultimately to the U.S. Pulkit has been extremely active in academics as well as extra-curricular activities. He is also known for his classical singing and was starred in a few musical films as well, according to his IMDb. He did his high schooling in Dallas, TX, and had to quit music due to the increasing academic pressure, but kept it as a hobby. During this time, he decided to focus all his attention on his passion, which is medicine, He started many drives in his high school to spread awareness about different diseases and disorders and often raised sums of money for research and development.
CAREER
After finishing high school, he moved to Canada and got admitted to the University of Alberta for his post-secondary education. His initial days of college life did not go as planned and he was diagnosed with clinical depression in early 2018. It took more than a year for him to recover from it. When asked about this experience, he said “it was so bad that I couldn’t figure out whether it was day or night…or what date or month it is”. Thankfully for him, he recovered without taking any antidepressants or any other mood-stabilizing pills. But, during this time, he shadowed a psychiatrist and observed the suffering of different patients, due to the side effects of the anti-depressants they were prescribed. This sparked an idea in his mind to figure out medicine that can be equally as effective as the current treatments and has little to no side effects.
He got very much involved with W. Somnifera, a multipurpose herb that claims to be a tonic for the whole body. Previous studies on this herb claim to reduce the effect of stress and anxiety. This led Pulkit to publish his first paper on W. Somnifera making a claim that a medicine made from this plant could be as effective as the current antidepressants or mood stabilizers (based on previous studies) and has little to no side effects even when taken for 7–10 years.
It was during this time, he observed that even cancer survivors go through a lot before recovering and the radiation that they have to go through is quite a hardship. So, he opened an organization at his university which focuses on educating people and spreading awareness about cancer. He also decided to push new ideas to treat cancer. He believed that “anything could be used to treat cancer”. Having said this, he wrote another paper focusing on the anti-tumor properties of O.Sanctum which focused on all the past studies done on the plant and how effective it has been when compared to the current treatments. Although the paper showed promising data, due to the lack of studies done on the plant, it wasn’t convincing enough.
Later in the year 2020, he raised a mammoth sum of $50,000 which was initially thought to be donated to cancer research, but since this was a really crazy year for the frontline warriors, he decided to split the money and donated $25,000 to frontline workers and another $25,000 to cancer research.
It’s not just about improving and introducing new ideas and innovations in the field of medicine, Pulkit is really concerned about the environment and climate change. He has also been encouraging people to develop and use clean and renewable resources. Although not explicitly said, he had hinted several times that there may have been studies going on to develop new greener energy resources and he might be a part of it.
