I'm reading the Henrietta Lacks book for my book club. I'm 78% through (you can always spot an e-book reader these days) and I'm not at all sure how I feel about the book. It's certainly a downer, but that shouldn't have been a surprise to me. It's a fascinating medical story, but a way-too-sad personal story. I was working for the National Cancer Institute in the 1970s, just about the time when Henrietta's family (living 30 miles north of me) was beginning to fully appreciate how her cells were being used. During the course of any given day at work I would read or type or say the words "HeLa cells" constantly. Little did I know. Although I DID know. I knew that HeLa stood for a woman named Helen Lane, which turned out to be not exactly right. And that her cells were being used everywhere to study chemotherapeutic agents. Sort of makes me uncomfortable.
And sadly I must once again call out a blonde woman for some criticism. The woman above, who will go unnamed, said an awful, hateful thing about another blonde woman, Meghan McCain, and it made news, of a sort, on many so-called news sites. This particular blonde woman gets my award for lowest of the low, but I fully admit that she really knows how to get attention. And I guess she makes a living at it. Horrible woman.
2 comments:
Ah hah--my BC wanted to read HL but a couple of us whose husbands are/were dying of cancer said NO. The librarian of our group(who can be rather pushy) insisted that it was just about the science of it and wouldn't be sad because the cancer was peripheral to the story. BS on that. Your story about working with the cells was fascinating. Glad a few of us put our feet firmly down though. I still don't feel ready to read books about cancer.I think that Blond Demon is an absolutely crazy, destructive, offensive POS. But how do I really feel? ;)
POS! I like that, and will use it often.
With so many great books out there to read I agree totally with your instinct to stay away from books like this one. Although I just finished it and the Afterword is good and stands alone. It's a short overview of the current legal state of affairs concerning the use of patient tissues in research. There's a tissue-rights movement, which asks a lot of tough questions about who owns what. I'm not devoting any thought to my personal position on this movement. Got too many positions to figure out as it is; don't need another.
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