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Indlæser... Henrietta Lacks' udødelige livaf Rebecca Skloot
  
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 JustZelma | Dec 20, 2020 |  Interesting read. The two central stories are how Henrietta Lacks contributed to producing the HeLa cell line and how her children have dealt with finding out about this. It covers a time period from the 1950s through to 2009 or so. Henrietta Lacks's ancestors were slaves in the US. Her family are religious with little or no formal education. The family were never informed about their mother's cell line for decades. When they did eventually find out their lack of understanding, information and religious beliefs led to anger, frustration, grief. The book is pretty well laid, giving just enough information. The author could have probably made the book several times longer but thankfully she didn't. Makes me want to read more about the scientific side of cells. (  ) adrian_smith | Dec 20, 2020 | Read only the first 50 pages or so. It was enough to get the background of what had happened and a bit of an understanding of the issues about cell research. (  ) kshydog | Dec 13, 2020 | I've been sick and not keeping up with books online and listened to this during that period. I initially didn't add a review because I have such mixed feelings about this book. The research is impeccable and I appreciate the access to this story. At the same time I feel uncomfortable in a way with how the author handled her interactions with the family. They rubbed me the wrong way. I've since done some research and found perhaps the author did cross the line a bit with the family. That leaves me feeling differently about the book as a whole. Important information gained in a manner not handled as respectfully by the author as it should've been? LoisSusan | Dec 10, 2020 | This is a powerful book about one woman's body being used by science, all without knowledge of her family. The pacing is tight, and the dense material reads well. I do have questions about a white woman writing black vernacular English, though, and I wonder if there were conversations about journalistic integrity and recreation--I just know that white folx have appropriated BVE to present wrong assumptions about black folx. I certainly do not think Ms. Skloot had any bad intentions here at all. (  ) DrFuriosa | Dec 4, 2020 |
 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. Has as a reference guide/companion
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. No library descriptions found. |
 Google Books — Indlæser...Populære omslagVurderingGennemsnit: (4.15)
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Book Discussion: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ~ SPOILER FREE~
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Overall I liked the book and appreciated exploring the wide range for topics: Henrietta Lacks, cell research, early genetics, human experimentation, poverty, medical ethics, journalism, the difference in treatment for black and whites in the early twentieth century, etc.
However, my issues will echo other reviews here in that this book focuses entirely too much on Skloot's journey to write this book. Instead of being a non0fiction book about all of the topics above, it is about Skloot writing a book about all of those topics; there is a difference and it got tiring toward the end. She inserts herself into the story so much, it became more about her journey instead of Henrietta Lacks, her family and the scientists involved in HeLa cell research. It is an important story to tell, yet Skloot seems a bit too congratulatory of her role and how much she inserted herself into the Lacks' life. It is also rather odd how much she rails against scientist who have sold HeLa cells for not compensating the family, yet she is doing the same thing. She goes out of her way to remind the Lack family that she is funding her own research and that she will not pay them. Scholarship fund or not, it is was telling that she points out how the family can't afford a headstone for Deborah, the very woman she has badgered and pushed for years while researching this book, flaming to be her close friend by the end. The relationship just seems one-sided and it was uncomfortable watching Skloot navigate the Lack family with her privilege, her own discomfort with their poverty and lack of education, and frankly her sense of being their savior and representative. (