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A DARKER RIBBON

Name: A DARKER RIBBON
Author: Ellen Leopold
ISBN: 0-8070-6512-9

BREAST CANCER, WOMEN, AND THEIR DOCTORS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

by Ellen Leopold ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 27, 1999

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A cultural history of breast cancer that focuses primarily on how social acceptance of the unequal roles of men and women has impeded progress in a woman’s disease. Leopold, a writer on women’s health issues for the Chicago Tribune, the Nation, and Self magazine and herself a breast cancer survivor, examines the social dynamics that have shaped contemporary attitudes toward breast cancer. She looks closely at the interaction between male physician and female patient as a key aspect of that dynamic. Besides giving the larger picture, Leopold includes an intimate closeup through revealing correspondence between two articulate women and their doctors. The first set, spanning the period 1917—22, is between a compliant woman, Barbara Mueller, and the famous surgeon William Steward Halsted, who developed the radical mastectomy procedure that was the standard treatment for breast cancer for most of this century; the second set, 1960—64, is between Rachel Carson, who had undergone the Halsted procedure, and George Crile, a trusted friend and surgeon from whom the noted scientist and writer sought advice when her own surgeon lied to her about her disease. Leopold notes that real changes in social attitudes toward the disease and in the biomedical approach to it were slow in coming. Nevertheless, the taboos against public disclosure were gradually lifted, notably in women’s magazines. The rise in breast cancer consciousness developed for the most part, she finds, outside the feminist movement, with women volunteers drafted by the male-dominated American Society for the Control of Cancer (later the American Cancer Society) to spread its message about the benefits of early detection. Attention is also given to the impact of the National Cancer Act of 1971, First Lady Betty Ford’s breast cancer in 1974, and the subsequent appearance of the first nationally known breast cancer advocate, Washington Post writer Rose Kushner. Now that women are involved, Leopold seems to be saying, things are looking up. A feminist approach to history for which the most appreciative audience will be found in women’s study courses.

Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1999

ISBN: 0-8070-6512-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Beacon Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999

Categories:

HEALTH & FITNESS

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THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS

by Rebecca Skloot ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2010

Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HEALTH & FITNESS

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE WRITING 2011
edited by Rebecca Skloot and Floyd Skloot

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WHY WE SWIM

by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

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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.