Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

54 reviews

abookandaspotoftea's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0


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becca_w_'s review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.75


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mandi4886's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0


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booksjessreads's review against another edition

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5.0

What. A. Book. This is genuinely one of my favourite books ever.  This book tells the life story of Henrietta Lacks (aka HeLa) who's 'Immortal cancer cells' were used to test treatments for polio, helped discover HIV, and helped us find out that transplanted organs are rejected in a new body by the immune system and not because of different DNA. Her cells still live today.

Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black woman with 5 children when she died from cervical cancer. Howard Jones, her doctor, took a sample of her cancer without her knowledge or consent and shipped it off to a lab where it kept growing and growing. Researchers took advantage of this, but kept Henrietta's family in the dark about medical research taking place because of her.

Rebecca Skloot tells this story so amazingly. Half of the book is Skloot telling us how she acquired the information about Henrietta, and the other half is telling us about Henrietta's life, all combined to make the book. Skloot does the story justice, showing the hardship the family faced in light of all the secrets kept from them. She talks about the ethics of taking cells without consent, the crippling racism the family faced in 1950s America, and centre's the voices of the family and Henrietta, rather than imposing her own narrative throughout the story.

A side note that half of the proceeds of the book go to Henrietta's family. The family didn't receive a single penny of the medical research or sales of Henrietta's cells, so if you ever get a chance to read the book, I encourage you to buy it (if you didn't need encouraging enough!)

Honestly such an incredible read and certainly one of my absolute favourites this year! 

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janice_sumka's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0


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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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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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