Akrit Jaswal - Medical Genius or not?

[Saberu]

I watched Extraordinary People on Channel 5 on Thursday night and it was about this 12 year old boy who was a medical genius, he had performed surgery at the age of 7 years old and claims to know the chemical structure of a synthetic chemical that can destroy a certain type of cancer.
Then again it's one thing to design a chemical structure and it's another to successfully synthesise a stable version of it.

Although there is some controversy over his talents, for example even though he scored highly (higher than Einstein) on an IQ test he had taken in the US he scored much lower on another IQ test taken in the UK.

Another question is will his potential highten as he goes through adolescence or will he become self-obsessed and arrogant a trait I noticed in him briefly during the programme. If he becomes that way he will surely lose focus of his goal to cure all cancers and diseases, or maybe it's this goal which causes the problem in that he is aiming too highly and putting too much pressure on himself as speculated in the programme.

Also he seems unwilling to partner up with other people and this lack of teamwork probably motivated by a desire for unshared fame to his future possible achievements may be his downfall.

 

[Saberu]

I think the problem here, as discussed in my recent thread, is simply that one area of his brain will have a much higher capacity and because of this, he will suffer in other areas in much the same drastic way.

I disagree with the idea of capacity, I think the reason he is worse on other areas such as visuospatial as discussed in the programme is because he has spent most of his time studying biology and anatomy and very little time on practical activities.
He certainly has the capacity to also be good at the practical activities, just not the time to do them unless he sacrifcies some of the time he spends studying biology books/ papers.

I haven't really made up my mind about the whole thing yet, but I think maybe his parents should encourage him to chill out, relax, stop thinking and just simply have some fun.

This is exactly what they were saying at the end of the programme and I completely agree, although waiting till 21 is a bit much- maybe till 16-18 is better.