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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (edizione 2010)di Rebecca Skloot (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaLa vita immortale di Henrietta Lacks di Rebecca Skloot
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This book was stupendous. Henrietta Lacks' story was both sad and angering. The treatment she underwent for her tumor seems barbaric now, though it was state of the art then. And it's hard not to see the researchers as callous, caring more about the tumor cells than the woman. Rebecca Skloot spent many years writing this book, and the detail is wonderful. She paints a sympathetic picture of Henrietta's family and what they went through during Henrietta's life and after her death. She is unflinching in her descriptions of the hair-raising things that researchers did to other people in the name of science. In the end there are no pat resolutions on the subject of medical ethics, tissue rights, etc. There is plenty of food for thought, though. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I'm glad my sister made me read it. Well-spoken and a talent for piecing a story together for optimum comprehension, Rebecca Skloot does a remarkable job of immersing the reader in the fears and joys of Debra Lacks and her siblings, as she relates the story of their mother, Henrietta Lacks, who, in 1951, when dying of cancer--complicated by syphilis, provided the gift of her cancer cells, which have lived on to provide a window into the mysterious biological mechanisms of life itself. If you thought biology was a bit too cold and scientific a subject, devoid of villains or heroes, think again. Depending on where I was, I alternated formats on this book, reading it both as an e-book and an audio. Each has its special benefits. Cassandra Campbell is a fabulous reader, and you really don’t want to miss the concluding author interview on the audio, but the photos of the characters in the print version should not be missed either. I was really moved by this story. I don't read much nonfiction, but am very glad I made time for this one. It's filled with important information about Henrietta, the cells that have done so much for science, and the wreckage and pain that is often left behind when a loved one is lost, particularly in difficult circumstances. I learned so much, but also found myself very involved in the Lacks family's struggle. It's sad, touching, and finally hopeful.
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. Ha come guida di riferimento/manualePremi e riconoscimentiMenzioniElenchi di rilievo
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. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)616.02774092Technology Medicine and health Diseases Pathology; Diseases; Treatment First aid; Emergency; Euthanasia Stem cellsClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Well, "donor" might not have been the correct word to use up there, because Henrietta didn't knowingly "donate" anything. Instead, the doctors working on her took the samples without bothering to ask her permission, which was standard practice at the time. And the ethics of this sort of thing, the evolution of informed consent, is a key part of the book, which Skloot weaves around the story of the Lacks family. How fast medical science has grown, and how slow the field's understanding of or willingness to comply with what is right has been in trying to keep up with it. In a world where all you need to get a basic understanding of your genetic picture is $100, to spit in a tube, and 6-8 weeks for processing, what kind of protections should be around that data? We likely still don't know the full implications of something like that being hacked or leaked.
This book has become a science classic already, and it's easy to see why: Skloot is a talented storyteller, and for most of the book's run does an admirable job of keeping her three pieces (Henrietta herself, the HeLa cells/medical ethics, and the story of the Lacks children) in balance. She does great work in digging up what little information there is about Henrietta's short life, mostly through the connections she managed to build with the children Lacks left behind. I've got some grounding in science research from my days as a psychology student, and I know about some of the more egregious bullshit doctors used to get up to (especially with the poor and people of color), but even I was shocked at how lax regulations on human research used to be and how deeply the focus was on getting data at any costs. I was chilled by the story she recounts of a researcher, who the Lacks children believe was untruthful with them when she encountered them years before the book was written, expressing her longing to be able to get material (i.e. blood) from those same people to perform tests.
The reason I haven't rated this more highly, then, is that it starts to drag at the end, becoming more a story about how the story was reported, which tends to bother me unless it's in small doses. It's clearly rooted in a deep, real fondness for Deborah Lacks, one of her primary sources, and a desire to do justice to her story too...but for me, it didn't have the power of the larger narrative and didn't quite work. That being said, this is a story everyone should read and I definitely recommend it to a wide audience. ( )