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My 2 main thoughts for this book are "sad" and "thought-provoking".
SAD because what's happened to Henrietta Lacks and her children. I'm talking about the social effects of being treated differently as "coloured people" from back way when. Being of ethnic origin, I can attest to the Un-pleasantness of being treated as different (though I am lucky being different today is NOT as it was back then).
THOUGHT-PROVOKING for the book touches of 'gray areas' concerns. Is there any limit of scientific rese ...more
SAD because what's happened to Henrietta Lacks and her children. I'm talking about the social effects of being treated differently as "coloured people" from back way when. Being of ethnic origin, I can attest to the Un-pleasantness of being treated as different (though I am lucky being different today is NOT as it was back then).
THOUGHT-PROVOKING for the book touches of 'gray areas' concerns. Is there any limit of scientific rese ...more
This is a true story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black Baltimore woman who goes to Johns Hopkins in 1951 for treatment of her cervical cancer. She is given radiation treatments but eventually dies of her illness. The doctors took samples of her organs without the knowledge or permission of the family to study and find that the cells that were taken from her were "immortal" and kept growing when others had all died. The cells were sent and sold worldwide for research and were identified as HeLa ce
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Boy this book was a real eye opener. If it had been fiction no one would ever believe it. You really have no idea what happens when you enter a hospital.
I don't even know what to say. This was so extremely informative and sad but overall, I felt like this book was POWERFUL. As a person in the medical field, it's hard for me to see the impact people who doe things "in the name of science" can have on the average person, family or community. Add in the fact that we are talking about something that happened to a black woman in the segregated south (yes, Baltimore is considered the south), and we have just a whole host of other issues. I was so move
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May 25, 2010
Gaijinmama
marked it as to-read
Aug 31, 2011
Stephanie Tuell
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Apr 23, 2012
Cherie
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Jan 20, 2013
ladymurmur
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Jul 27, 2013
Lisa Kay
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Dec 05, 2020
Jen
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