A harsh view of current efforts to battle cancer, certain to alarm patients and anger many researchers and clinicians.
Despite recent advances in the understanding of cancer at the molecular level, a radiologist argues that the war on cancer as presently waged is unwinnable.
Currently, writes Cuomo, our research system is fraught with duplication of effort, conflict of interest, drive for personal gain and far too little oversight. Although billions of dollars have been spent since 1971, when President Nixon declared war on cancer by signing the National Cancer Act, an estimated 1.6 million new cases will be diagnosed this year and hundreds of thousands will die. The author charges that government and academic research efforts have been fragmented, with little collaboration and too much bureaucracy. Her answer: Make cancer prevention a top priority by establishing a National Cancer Prevention Institute under the National Institutes of Health to coordinate research. Cuomo takes a sharp look at the problems with our present screening methods, the inconsistency in doctors’ recommendations for them, the misleading information they may provide and the harm they can cause. Current treatment options—surgery, radiation and chemotherapy—are not only brutal in their side effects, but enormously expensive, with drugs leading the way in pushing up costs. Further, many expensive drugs, some of which are quite profitable to the doctors who prescribe and provide them, do little to prolong life. The author asks the pharmaceutical industry to redirect its efforts into better tools for preventing cancer through early detection, effective vaccines and new means of protecting the immune system. Cuomo also offers some common-sense advice to individuals on steps to take to lower the risk of cancer—i.e., taking better care of their own health through exercise, diet and avoiding tobacco; teaching their children to do the same; and advocating for a safer environment.
A harsh view of current efforts to battle cancer, certain to alarm patients and anger many researchers and clinicians.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60961-885-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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