Melanie has "three great passions": writing poetry, surfboarding, and playing bass guitar. In the future, she'd like to "convey the wonders of science" through music and film.
After Melanie's former teacher was diagnosed with melanoma, Melanie learned all she could about the disease. She noticed that many patients had tried alternative treatments, many of them topical. She decided to study a few of them.
Melanie set up a light box and exposed earthworms to UV-B radiation. Worms exposed to the most radiation showed signs of melanoma. Melanie then immersed the worms into five liquids that preliminary research showed could be possible melanoma treatments: tree oil, echinacea, vitamin D, coffee, and soy milk. She counted the number of melanoma-like wounds and melanoma-like cells under a microscope twice a week for 20 weeks. She discovered that while untreated worms showed an increase in melanoma cells, all the treated worms showed a decrease. Tree oil and echinacea performed best.
