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whiskeytown 's review for:
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
Pretty good. There were two things about this book that I did not expect.
First, the portion of the book covering Henrietta Lacks' life up until her death was only about the first third of the book. The remainder focused more on her family and the legacy of her cells from the 1950s until the present day.
Second, while this book did cover some of the scientific aspects of the immortal cell line and how it was used in medicine and research, it was much more an oral history biography of Henrietta Lacks and her family, particularly her daughter Deborah.
The book also covered a lot of questions about ethics and patient rights, but I found this to be done in a very positive way. Ms. Skloot does not prescribe a correct or preferred interpretation of the ethical issues, but presents an objective look at how this area of medicine has evolved in the past sixty years. She presents the family's viewpoints, and includes some landmark court cases that are relevant, but it's left to the reader to make their own decisions based on the information presented.
As it stands now, patients from whom tissue samples are taken do not have any legal right to those tissues or what is done with them. I'm still not sure what I think about this - it is something I will have to consider for a while before I can come to a stance one way or the other, I think.
First, the portion of the book covering Henrietta Lacks' life up until her death was only about the first third of the book. The remainder focused more on her family and the legacy of her cells from the 1950s until the present day.
Second, while this book did cover some of the scientific aspects of the immortal cell line and how it was used in medicine and research, it was much more an oral history biography of Henrietta Lacks and her family, particularly her daughter Deborah.
The book also covered a lot of questions about ethics and patient rights, but I found this to be done in a very positive way. Ms. Skloot does not prescribe a correct or preferred interpretation of the ethical issues, but presents an objective look at how this area of medicine has evolved in the past sixty years. She presents the family's viewpoints, and includes some landmark court cases that are relevant, but it's left to the reader to make their own decisions based on the information presented.
As it stands now, patients from whom tissue samples are taken do not have any legal right to those tissues or what is done with them. I'm still not sure what I think about this - it is something I will have to consider for a while before I can come to a stance one way or the other, I think.