Not easy going for general readers given the depth, breadth, and detail Carver brings to a complex subject, but credit her...
A British immunologist explores “the incredible arsenal that lives within us and how it kills off a plethora of diseases, from the common cold to the plague.”
Currently a health policy researcher at Harvard, Carver begins with our “innate” immune system, the cells and chemicals that roam the bloodstream or are found on cell surfaces or in secretions like tears or saliva. They’re also in the stomach making hydrochloric acid, which spells death for invading bacteria, and even populate ear wax, which exists to eliminate bacteria and remove debris. In the bloodstream, neutrophils and macrophages are on patrol to seek and destroy the enemy. They are aided by whole families of circulating proteins that are able to destroy invaders as well as a population of chemical messengers that orchestrate events, including the triggering of inflammation. There are also inherited proteins that serve as bar codes to tell immune cells to ignore them because they are not foreign. Without that identification or a good match, a transplanted organ will be rejected and necessitate immunosuppressant drugs. Carver ably explains it all, including why a fetus is not rejected during pregnancy or why a transplant sometimes attacks its host. The author then moves on to the “adaptive” immune system, comprised of T cells that learn, remember, and can kill specific pathogens or cancer cells, and the B cells, which generate disease-specific antibodies. Catastrophe occurs when the immune system goes into overdrive, which can lead to allergies, autoimmune disease, or even death. Carver agrees that allergies may be on the rise given the hygiene hypothesis—i.e., our overly sanitized lives. She also decries the growth of antibiotic resistance. In the final chapter, she points to some new approaches to killing bacteria, including the use of bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, to do the dirty work.
Not easy going for general readers given the depth, breadth, and detail Carver brings to a complex subject, but credit her for the wits—and wittiness—she uses to enlighten us.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4729-1511-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury Sigma
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
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
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