An army to advance cancer research | Guillemette Jacob | TEDxParis |

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, organized independently of the TED Conferences.
"Les Seintinelles" (saint-inels), winners of the L'Echappee volée 2014 project, are transforming the individual struggles into a solidarity battle. With the help of researchers, women, and the Internet, the Seintinelles enable the advancement of cancer research.

One in five women will get cancer,

which means 160 women in this room.

As for the others,

you will also be affected,
if only indirectly.

This is a tragedy,

but what if it were
also part of the solution?

When I became ill,

my sisters, by blood and by heart,

saw to it that I would never go alone
to chemotherapy.

They ran errands, cooked, wrote, called,

in short, exerting incredible energy
to see me through.

This energy, this need to be useful,
to stick together,

is very powerful
when you've been hit yourself.

One in five women, plus their sisters
by blood or by heart,

add up to a lot of women
who have to deal with cancer

and the energy it requires.

Along with them,

we have researchers
who do an extraordinary job.

Today, one out of two cancers is cured,

while only one in three
was being cured in the '90s.

What is less known
is what Dr. Fabien Reyal,

researcher at the M. Curie Institute
and my partner, explained to me.

Namely that researchers need us
to participate in their studies,

whether we have been ill or not.

In order to find us,
they waste precious time.

To get us in the doctor's office,
in the waiting rooms,

or look us up in the white pages.

For them, recruiting volunteers

is time consuming,
laborious and expensive.

That's why we created "Seintinelles".
[Saint-inels]

Specifically, it's a website

where women sign up
by giving us their email address,

so that we can inform them

each time a researcher needs volunteers
to participate in their study.

We've been online for one year,

and we already have 6,800 women

who've been asked to participate
in four studies,

and this is only the beginning.

We are aiming for 50,000 Seintinelles,

as we want to open up to men
and other countries

because solidarity and goodwill
have no borders.

"Saint-inels" is a play on words,
of course,

but it's much more than that.

Cancer is a deadly war.

Alone, we can only win a battle,

but not the war.

To win a war,

we need an army.

In this room, there are 1,600
who could join our army.

You are sixteen hundred
more reasons to hope.

Thank you.

(Applause)