A solidly researched and informative look at the impact of negative drug reactions.
A journalist explores the potential risks of a commonly prescribed antibiotic.
Not long after journalist and entrepreneur Heise took the antibiotic Levaquin, prescribed for a sinus infection,she was diagnosed with tendonitis throughout her entire body. Heise soon discovered a growing community of people who asserted that Levaquin and other fluoroquinolones caused a range of physical and psychological problems that were often difficult to treat. In this debut health book, the author investigates various issues with fluoroquinolones and what she sees as the insufficient regulatory response to them. She explores the history and development of the drugs, their use and misuse, and the warnings that accompany them. The author then steps back to put fluoroquinolones in the broader context of the pharmaceutical industry and the regulatory environment that governs it. The book notes how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration responded to complaints about fluoroquinolones by increasing the number of warnings issued but not limiting use of the drugs. (In the book’s epilogue, Heise notes that although Levaquin’s manufacturer stopped production of that drug in 2017, there are many other types of fluoroquinolones still available.) Over the course of the book, Heise raises points that are little known outside the pharmaceutical industry, such as that the FDA can ask companies to withdraw certain problematic drugs from the market, but has no authority to require it. The book also addresses general questions about the overuse of antibiotics and their impact on the body and the environment. Heise is a strong writer and her book is well organized and informative; she supports her arguments with a substantial bibliography and avoids taking an overly alarmist tone. She addresses issues, such as the corporatization of the medical system, but focuses on concrete actions that ordinary people may take, such as reporting symptoms through the FDA’s website.
A solidly researched and informative look at the impact of negative drug reactions.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73339-050-7
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Birdseed LLC
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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