An intriguing look at the costs to children’s health wrought by bad information and poor parenting.
A pediatrician examines the rise of once-contained and nearly extirpated diseases, especially measles.
Thanks to widespread vaccination programs in the 1950s and 1960s, writes Ratner, diseases such as rotavirus and strep largely disappeared, so much so that pediatric residents often “go through years of training without ever seeing a child with either of these infections.” Just so, polio had almost disappeared until recently. This describes the situation in the developed, wealthy world, Ratner hastens to add: There is a strong differential in childhood diseases between rich and poor communities, and this should not be so. “Every single child diagnosed with measles anywhere in the world represents a system failure—an inexcusable unforced error,” he urges. That system failure has to do with money: Ratner examines the disease patterns in rich and poor neighborhoods in Texarkana, where “living on the wrong side of State Line Avenue can be hazardous to your health.” Money is one issue, and so is the anti-vaccine movement, which fearfully depicts vaccinations as instruments of government control. The result: Whereas in 1994 the world “was on its way to being measles-free,” we see frequent outbreaks in the U.S. alone, particularly in schools. Much of the anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-lockdown mentality draws on misinformation and disinformation, Ratner holds, to say nothing of activists such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been in the habit of “ghoulishly spreading unfounded anti-vaccine messages in an attempt to ensure that no tragedy would go to waste.” Noting that “the time to secure furniture to the wall is before a child starts pulling up on it,” Ratner closes by arguing that good science-based education should be put to work to supplant bad information and bad intentions—which, sadly, would seem to be wishful thinking.
An intriguing look at the costs to children’s health wrought by bad information and poor parenting.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593330869
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avery
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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