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Carregando... The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacksde Rebecca Skloot
  
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 CDJLibrary | Feb 26, 2021 |  I starting reading this without knowing what it was about, and it's a real doozy. It's about a woman who's cells are responsible for much of our medicines and medical knowledge of today. I guess the topic is bioethics. Her background and the life of her family after her death are given. There's so much moral conflict surround their situation and no clear cut answers for these situations going forward. The author does a great job of showing all sides of the matter. Very interesting and thought provoking. I liked learning about the people involved, putting the human elements into the equation. (  ) ToniFGMAMTC | Feb 17, 2021 | Exploitation of the poor; the real and lingering impacts of slavery and racism; the ethical use of human tissue in scientific research; the treatment of the mentally ill; child abuse; sexual abuse; the power of religion - these could each be the subject of a compelling story in and of themselves, but they all come together in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot has put together the true life tale of Henrietta Lacks, and the impact on her family of her death and her contribution to medical science - a line of cells grown from her tissue that became instrumental in a number of advances in medicine. In 1951 Henrietta Lacks, a young black mother of five children came to Johns Hopkins and was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Johns Hopkins was founded with a mission of aiding all who came to it, rich or poor, regardless of race, and Henrietta received the standard of care for the time. As part of her care a biopsy of her cancer cells was taken (without her understanding or consent, which was also part of the standard of care at the time), and sent to a tissue lab to be cultured. At that time human cells were difficult to culture and keep for any period of time. Each attempt to culture human cells frustratingly ended with the cells dying out. Henrietta’s cells on the other hand, grew quickly, doubling every 20 and 24 hours, and continued to grow so long as provided with medium to grow in. This represented a real breakthrough in cell culture and its ability to enable medical research. Labelled “HeLa”, Henrietta’s cells were instrumental in the development of the polio vaccine in the mid-50’s. HeLa cells quickly became the basis of research in labs around the world, aiding in the study of viruses, drugs, toxins, hormones, radiation, etc. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s family continued on without her. They did not know nor understand that cells taken from her were aiding medical science and having such an impact. It wasn’t until many years later that they found out, and even then there was much confusion in the family as to what exactly had happened, and how their mother’s cells were being used. Without giving too much more away I’ll say that this is not a happy book, but it is a compelling read that will doubtless make you think. Rebecca Skloot made a commitment to the Lacks family to tell their mother’s story and she does so well. Her writing style is a bit too dry and reportorial for my taste, but the power of the story really makes this a good read. ( ) stevrbee | Feb 7, 2021 | Wish I could give this a 4.5. Rebecca Skloot did a great job of weaving all the stories together - that of getting the story, Henrietta, the Lacks family, and the Hela cells. My heart still breaks for the Lacks children and grandchildren. Deborah, in particular, I wanted to reach through those pages and hug __ I mean really hug. I also wanted to reach through those pages to throttle SO many people in the medical community. (  ) GiGiGo | Feb 5, 2021 | An interesting book about medical ethics and the lives of a family who were, like many black people in the 1950s exploited and experimented on without their consent. It was missing many real details about the extent of the research done on the HeLa cells, it was mentioned but not explored in any real detail. (  ) CharlotteBurt | Feb 1, 2021 |
 Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks family’s often painful history with grace. She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mother’s continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just about “the facts.” Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful. I put down Rebecca Skloot’s first book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” more than once. Ten times, probably. Once to poke the fire. Once to silence a pinging BlackBerry. And eight times to chase my wife and assorted visitors around the house, to tell them I was holding one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I’ve read in a very long time. Writing with a novelist's artistry, a biologist's expertise, and the zeal of an investigative reporter, Skloot tells a truly astonishing story of racism and poverty, science and conscience, spirituality and family, all driven by a galvanizing inquiry into the sanctity of the body and the very nature of the life force. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in a “colored” hospital ward in Baltimore in 1951. She would have gone forever unnoticed by the outside world if not for the dime-sized slice of her tumor sent to a lab for research eight months earlier. ... Skloot, a science writer, has been fascinated with Lacks since she first took a biology class at age 16. As she went on to earn a degree in the subject, she yearned to know more about the woman, anonymous for years, who was responsible for those ubiquitous cells.... Skloot tells a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit society's most vulnerable people. Tem como guia de referência/texto acompanhante
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
 Google Books — Carregando...Capas popularesAvaliaçãoMédia: (4.15)
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Book Discussion: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ~ SPOILER FREE~
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In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics." A Kirkus starred review, www.kirkusreviews.com