A powerful argument for a more equitable approach to health care.
An urgent study of how ethnic minority patients are medically disadvantaged because they are economically and socially disadvantaged—and they are dying because of it.
Liverpool, a British journalist for Nature with an expertise in immunology and virology, takes a broad view of a thorny problem: Racism plays a critical factor in health care and, as the Lancet notes, is “a public health emergency of global concern.” Systematic racism presents in many ways in the health sphere, including the persistent belief that Black people have differences enough in their pain receptors that they require less anesthesia in surgery. Biological differences do exist, notes the author, but these are at the genetic level and affect such things as the ability to metabolize certain therapeutic drugs, in the same way that people with certain genetic markers have difficulty metabolizing dairy products. Racism is often marked by simple carelessness. Algorithms for one dermatology app, for instance, were trained on light-skinned people, making their diagnostics suspect for those of darker complexion. Liverpool herself suffers from a skin condition that white doctors said was incurable until one dermatologist pronounced it common eczema that expresses itself somewhat differently on darker skin. Racially grounded disparities in health care are everywhere: Black patients wait far longer for organ transplants than whites, and standardized tests eliminate many from the candidate rolls; Black and brown people were disproportionately affected by Covid-19, and hospitals treating Black patients received fewer funds; childbirth mortality rates are higher for Black women than for white women; and so on. Liverpool notes that while these disparities are measurable, “instead of simply stating that Black people are dying disproportionately because they are poor, we should be asking why Black people…are disproportionately poor in the first place.”
A powerful argument for a more equitable approach to health care.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781662601675
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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