mishka432's review against another edition
4.0
Super interesting read. The narrative is engaging and the history is well-researched. Great book to expose students to the inequalities of scientific research.
gheron's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
katienunnery's review against another edition
4.0
This book is super interesting but also super depressing. I learned so much about cell and tissue research that I never knew before and also about the legalities and ethics surrounding it. I’m definitely considering teaching excerpts of this book in my upcoming Public Health oriented writing course.
But the dark threads of racism and poverty run through the story of Henrietta’s family. We also see the brokenness of our current healthcare system on full display as her family members struggle to be able to afford the medical miracles their own mother’s cells have made possible.
Skloot definitely tells an interesting story and you can see that she works to keep humanity, authenticity, and even-handedness as the primary tenants of her work. She works to bring the Lacks family fully to life, with dialect and story-telling patterns intact, but this sometimes starts to feel like they are flattened into caricatures. In order to maintain an “objective” tone it also sometimes seems like she’s working too hard to exonerate certain scientist figures due to good intentions.
But the dark threads of racism and poverty run through the story of Henrietta’s family. We also see the brokenness of our current healthcare system on full display as her family members struggle to be able to afford the medical miracles their own mother’s cells have made possible.
Skloot definitely tells an interesting story and you can see that she works to keep humanity, authenticity, and even-handedness as the primary tenants of her work. She works to bring the Lacks family fully to life, with dialect and story-telling patterns intact, but this sometimes starts to feel like they are flattened into caricatures. In order to maintain an “objective” tone it also sometimes seems like she’s working too hard to exonerate certain scientist figures due to good intentions.
crabbygirl's review against another edition
4.0
this book was a great combination of story and science; i was one-third into it on the first day of reading and still didn't want to put it down.
the author heads each chapter with a timeline which makes the jumps between timeframes easy to follow and lets her see through one 'arm' of the story (of which there are many!). this must be one of the hardest things to balance: how to weave scientific discovery - which is incremental and is often attributed to many different scientists - into a story that encompasses not one, but 2 women's lives.
what results is a remarkable piece of non-fiction that couches the details of cancer research, gene mapping, the development of the polio vaccine, tissue culture and it's legal implications into a memoir.
the author heads each chapter with a timeline which makes the jumps between timeframes easy to follow and lets her see through one 'arm' of the story (of which there are many!). this must be one of the hardest things to balance: how to weave scientific discovery - which is incremental and is often attributed to many different scientists - into a story that encompasses not one, but 2 women's lives.
what results is a remarkable piece of non-fiction that couches the details of cancer research, gene mapping, the development of the polio vaccine, tissue culture and it's legal implications into a memoir.
smortimer's review against another edition
4.0
Second read, and I still think it’s such an important book. There was a lot of hype when the book first came out and now it’s interesting to reflect on what’s happened since (or hasn’t happened.) Glad that the author really did set up a scholarship fund for the Lacks family, but need to conduct further research on other events since the publication.
meganrenae's review
4.0
I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but I felt like this book read a bit like fiction. It obviously included research but wasn't at all boring. It was also a great subject I didn't know anything about. I really enjoyed this book and would really recommend it.
brigirl's review against another edition
4.0
This book was not only about the life and death of Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cancer cells are now used in countless research labs to develop drugs, vaccines, and treatments to various diseases. This book was about the American history of racism, even in science and research, it was about the laws protecting (or not) human tissue ownership, but it was also about the personal stories and life events of the Lacks family, Henrietta’s children, grand children and grand-grand children. So in that sense, it was a brilliantly woven structure of history, science and biographical stories that ends up making this book. It has left me with so many questions that are still unanswered, for example about the informed consent for medical procedures and about the money being made out of all the tissues, cells and blood of people without their knowledge. A lot to think on the ethics of it all after finishing this book.
I think it is a good example of science journalism with a dash of personality and emotion. I really appreciate how the author narrated the stories of the Lacks family members by not really prettying up the language and keeping the essence of the person who speaks.
My only criticism is - as with many non-fiction books - this book also becomes repetitive after some point, especially after the second half. It is not very much information-dense after the first half and perhaps could be a shorter book.
I think it is a good example of science journalism with a dash of personality and emotion. I really appreciate how the author narrated the stories of the Lacks family members by not really prettying up the language and keeping the essence of the person who speaks.
My only criticism is - as with many non-fiction books - this book also becomes repetitive after some point, especially after the second half. It is not very much information-dense after the first half and perhaps could be a shorter book.
heather01602to60660's review against another edition
4.0
Fascinating to read, and left me thinking about the lingering questions over cell and tissue ownership, progress, profit, etc. after finishing. Every time I think I know how I feel on the issue, something sways me back into internal debate.
jessgock's review against another edition
5.0
Nearly everyone on my Goodreads friends list had read and given a positive review to this book before my book club selected it, so I knew it was going to be interesting, but I didn't expect it to be as engaging as it turned out to be. While on the surface this is a book about science and medical ethics, it turns out to be even more a book about a family and their struggles to reconcile the good things their mother's cells have done for science with the fact that neither she nor they knew her cells were being taken, and that no profits from the use of her cells have ever come back to the family.
Henrietta Lacks lived in poverty in rural Virginia and died of cervical cancer at the age of 31. She was treated at Johns Hopkins University during an era when best practices for medical ethics had not been codified, and so a tissue culture scientist at Hopkins didn't think twice about taking a cell sample from a black woman who was not paying for her hospital stay - he was engrossed in a project to try to create the first immortal line of cells and was taking samples from everyone he came in contact with. He had no way of knowing that the cancer growing on her cervix would be the the first cells to thrive in a laboratory - but thrive they did. When her cells kept growing, the scientist, George Gey, started sharing them with every scientist who asked, and amazingly, the cells survived shipment through the mail and long trips in people's pockets and continued to grow in other laboratories. Suddenly, HeLa cells were everywhere, even though other cell lines continued to die out after a few generations.
Henrietta passed away, yet for years - continuing even to the present day - scientists conducted thousands of tests on HeLa cells to understand how cells survive in outer space, in atomic bombs, and when subjected to any number of medical conditions. Her cells led to a multitude of scientific discoveries, and because of the lax regulations when her cells were first taken, it didn't take long for journalists to uncover Henrietta's identity and to start contacting her family - which is how they first learned that Henrietta's cells had outlived her. Her family, living in poverty, was understandably divided between pride at the discoveries that had come from HeLa cells and anger that scientists and corporations were profiting off of their genetic material.
The scientific side of the story is interesting in itself, but Skloot's book succeeds primarily because she lets us get to know Henrietta's children and other family members. Over time, Skloot formed a friendship with Henrietta's daughter Deborah, and Deborah gradually allowed Skloot access to other family members, most of whom were guarded after repeated bad experiences with members of the press. At the heart of this book is the story of Deborah and her relatives, who lived in poverty and were primarily uneducated, yet who wanted desperately to learn more about their mother's legacy and to reach some kind of closure in the whole situation.
I was surprised by how quickly I was drawn into this book, and by how quickly I devoured it. If you're unfamiliar with HeLa cells, you'll learn a lot by reading this book, but even if you know the science, there's a lot to think about just reading about the Lacks family and their struggles to understand what had happened to their mother's cells. Highly recommended.
Note: I wrote this review after my original reading of the book, October 7-14, 2011. I re-read the book in July 2013. I think I'm a little stingier with five-star reviews now than I was on my first read and might have only given it four this time around, but I'll leave everything as it stands. This is a very engaging and informative read and still something I highly recommend.
Henrietta Lacks lived in poverty in rural Virginia and died of cervical cancer at the age of 31. She was treated at Johns Hopkins University during an era when best practices for medical ethics had not been codified, and so a tissue culture scientist at Hopkins didn't think twice about taking a cell sample from a black woman who was not paying for her hospital stay - he was engrossed in a project to try to create the first immortal line of cells and was taking samples from everyone he came in contact with. He had no way of knowing that the cancer growing on her cervix would be the the first cells to thrive in a laboratory - but thrive they did. When her cells kept growing, the scientist, George Gey, started sharing them with every scientist who asked, and amazingly, the cells survived shipment through the mail and long trips in people's pockets and continued to grow in other laboratories. Suddenly, HeLa cells were everywhere, even though other cell lines continued to die out after a few generations.
Henrietta passed away, yet for years - continuing even to the present day - scientists conducted thousands of tests on HeLa cells to understand how cells survive in outer space, in atomic bombs, and when subjected to any number of medical conditions. Her cells led to a multitude of scientific discoveries, and because of the lax regulations when her cells were first taken, it didn't take long for journalists to uncover Henrietta's identity and to start contacting her family - which is how they first learned that Henrietta's cells had outlived her. Her family, living in poverty, was understandably divided between pride at the discoveries that had come from HeLa cells and anger that scientists and corporations were profiting off of their genetic material.
The scientific side of the story is interesting in itself, but Skloot's book succeeds primarily because she lets us get to know Henrietta's children and other family members. Over time, Skloot formed a friendship with Henrietta's daughter Deborah, and Deborah gradually allowed Skloot access to other family members, most of whom were guarded after repeated bad experiences with members of the press. At the heart of this book is the story of Deborah and her relatives, who lived in poverty and were primarily uneducated, yet who wanted desperately to learn more about their mother's legacy and to reach some kind of closure in the whole situation.
I was surprised by how quickly I was drawn into this book, and by how quickly I devoured it. If you're unfamiliar with HeLa cells, you'll learn a lot by reading this book, but even if you know the science, there's a lot to think about just reading about the Lacks family and their struggles to understand what had happened to their mother's cells. Highly recommended.
Note: I wrote this review after my original reading of the book, October 7-14, 2011. I re-read the book in July 2013. I think I'm a little stingier with five-star reviews now than I was on my first read and might have only given it four this time around, but I'll leave everything as it stands. This is a very engaging and informative read and still something I highly recommend.