A spirited but unconvincing defense of Campbell’s earlier work.
Campbell (Emeritus, Nutritional Biochemistry/Cornell Univ.; The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, 2005) elaborates on the themes of his earlier book and the 2011 documentary film Forks Over Knives.
In 1980, the author began a study with Chinese scientists to investigate how the transformation of the Chinese diet in the aftermath of the stringencies of the Cultural Revolution affected the health of a sample of 100 Chinese families living in two different rural counties. A comparison with mortality statistics 20 years earlier showed a significant increase with the introduction of more protein in their diets. While admitting that these conclusions (taken from the original China study) are based on correlations and do not establish causality, Campbell does base his dietary recommendations on those conclusions. He claims that the adoption of a whole-foods, plant-based lifestyle can prevent 95 percent of all cancers, nearly all heart attacks and strokes, and even reverse severe heart disease. The author cautions against the use of dietary supplements and multivitamins and rejects the potential of targeted drugs as well as traditional medical remedies such as chemotherapy and radiation. He attempts to buttress his conclusions by referring to experiments conducted on rats in which the incidence of cancer was significantly higher for those fed a diet high in animal protein. Campbell dismisses the failure of medical and scientific journals to publish papers that he has written over the years, attributing this to biased peer review and financial pressure from doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, and dairy and livestock producers. While his earlier book had impressive sales figures, he complains that the media has failed to showcase his work.
A spirited but unconvincing defense of Campbell’s earlier work.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-937856-24-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: BenBella
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
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
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
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