With estimable dignity, a mother recounts the horrendous tragedy her family suffered when, due to the scandalous indifference of certain pharmaceutical companies, the medicines her sons used became deadly poisons. This modern horror narrative is all the more shocking because every word is true. With simple eloquence and understandable anger, but never indulging in morbid self-pity, DePrince tells of her five sons (three adopted), all of whom suffered from hemophilia. For years, the DePrince children's painful internal hemorrhaging was controlled with clotting factor, a medication distilled from the pooled blood of thousands of donors. In the early 1980s, HIV from some donors contaminated clotting factor, converting into a lethal toxin the very medicine that had freed families from the scourge of hemophilia. As a result, an estimated 8,000 hemophiliacs and many spouses of hemophiliacs, not to mention many recipients of blood transfusions, became infected with HIV. Two of the DePrince children, Cubby and Mike, died from AIDS. DePrince describes such moving and profound scenes as 11-year-old Cubby stoically preparing for death, comforting his grieving family and friends, and keeping a journal of his thoughts as life painfully slips away. Ably interweaving her personal tale with the medical story of how clotting factor was developed, DePrince informs us as well of the most horrific aspect of the catastrophe: A process developed in Germany to inactivate hepatitis in clotting factor also proved effective in destroying HIV, but it was passed up by various American pharmaceutical companies in favor of a cheaper method that left HIV intact. The author details the legal actions she and others have taken to obtain justice for the thousands of needless deaths. While inspiring the reader through the DePrince family's saga of fortitude, Cry Bloody Murder presents as well an effective, concise introduction to the science, business, and legal issues defining the hemophilia/HIV catastrophe.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45676-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
