Reviews tagging 'Incest'

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

71 reviews

sienas_books's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

3.5


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foreverinastory's review against another edition

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emotional informative sad

5.0

Everyone should read this book, but especially the scientific field.

CWs: Abandonment, ableism, addiction, blood, cancer, child abuse, chronic illness, death, death of parent, drug abuse/use, emotional abuse, fatphobia, forced institutionalization, grief, incest, infidelity, medical content, medical trauma, mental illness (PTSD), physical abuse, pedophilia, pregnancy, racial slurs, racism, rape, sexual assault, sexual content, sexual harassment, terminal illness, vomit. 

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vampiretree's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.5


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spasqual's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective medium-paced

5.0


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marenk's review against another edition

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informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

This book was so informative! It talks about Henrietta Lacks, her life and the life of her family, but also about so much more. It discusses racism in medicine and the rights of patients and doctors (mostly regarding tissue samples).
Before reading this book, I expected it to be very scientific and hard to read, but that honestly wasn‘t the case at all! It is easy to read and you really don‘t need to know a lot about medicine (I didn‘t either).
I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in medicine, genetics and/or the ethical code of medicine!

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peachani's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.0


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ericadansereau's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.5

Incredible story I couldn’t put down. I appreciated the insight into Henrietta and her family, I felt like I got to know them. The author did a wonderful job with her thorough report detailing facts about the HeLa cell line and all of the ethical and legal concerns surrounding it. Some of the book was quite shocking and disturbing to read when it came to medical care and general treatment of this family and black patients. This is such an important subject and I definitely recommend this book. 

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hannahollihan's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.0


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eflatkey's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.0


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marieketron's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

2.0

I felt very ambivalent about this book and my rating of it dropped the more of it I read. It's an important book to read but the execution could have been a lot better.

the good bits
  • the science history
  • discussions on science ethics, especially in regards to informed consent
  • the life history of Henrietta
  • overview of the scientific controversies related to HeLa
  • life of the Lacks family and how they relate to Henrietta and HeLa

the not so good bits
  • clearly the story of Henrietta and HeLa is important and needs to be told, but at the same time the Lacks family did not reach out to reporters or writers in order for the story to be told. It calls into question whether we have the right to a story just because it's important and regardless of the people connected to it, which very closely ties in with the type of issues the book itself is discussing.
  • this issue is emphasised by the author continuously inserting herself into the narrative, to the point of almost making herself up like a White Saviour. i skipped through the last few chapters where the we are learning everything about Deborah from the author's perspective. It is important for Henrietta's family to have a clear voice in this work, but it could have been done in a way that didn't include the author.
  • specific for the audiobook version, I felt very uncomfortable with the accents the narrator used to give form to the Lacks family, other Black people, and a few Asian and German characters. this issue is especially egregious because Bahni Turpin was contracted as one of the two narrators but only used very sparingly and extremely inconsistently. She would have been the perfect voice for Henrietta's daughter Deborah, but she only reads the occasional direct quote from her. I can remember three instances throughout the book where the narrator is Turpin.

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