Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

[Note: I'm not sure why this isn't listed as a "verified purchase". I bought it on Kindle.] You will be fascinated to learn the remarkable fate of Henrietta's diseased cells. You will be interested to learn about Henrietta herself. You will enjoy being reminded of the daily possibility of unexpected miracles. If only the book had been limited to those topics! But it wasn't. Henrietta, dying young, left a large family, each member having his or her story to tell -- and tell -- and tell. The author, inexplicably, found all their stories (and opinions) compelling enough to share with the world. In consequence, the book became painful reading, indeed. I an old enough to remember those old anthropological extracts in which a smug writer chortles over the simplemindedness of some primitive society in which he has managed, despite such comical backwardness, to survive a couple of months. This book was written in that tradition. The author faithfully records how the family of Henrietta Lacks, the indigent recipient of state-of-the-art cancer treatment, believes that its relative was horribly exploited by the physicians/scientists whose training and skill wrought value from her excised tumor. She succeeds in establishing that they are mightily aggrieved, but she fails to make sense of the grotesquely disproportionate degree of distress that they experience as a result of the scientists' having studied and used what otherwise would have been cast into the hospital incinerator. The attempts to suggest parallels with recent documented circumstances of human experimentation are simply over the top, if not outright destructive to human relations. The goal of Ms. Lacks' treatment was to save her life, not to harvest her cells for experimentation. The author was careless in her treatment of that profound distinction. You'll notice plenty of exploitation in this book, however. Sadly, the source is this single-minded and self-absorbed young author. Having cast herself in the role of a Great White Deliverer, she has come charging in to rescue the hapless family from . . . what? The only "problem" exists between the ears of the obviously disturbed Deborah, and some less than scrupulous men. Anyone with a heart must feel for Deborah, despite her determination to waste her energy wallowing in state of elective victimhood. I abandoned this book still wondering why this author would encourage, even aggravate, this woman's helplessness and unhappiness. Ms. Skloot, however self-impressed, is probably well-intentioned, but, with her meddling and condescension, she is Austen's Emma personified! You've got to admire Skloot's tenacity and dedication, but in the final analysis, there is simply not enough worthwhile material here. Everything that merits our attention -- the scientific/medical information, and the little bit we learn about Henrietta herself -- could easily have been distilled into a magazine article. Interest in the remaining material is probably limited to the audience of Jerry Springer. I felt smirched by my participation in this voyeuristic excursion into the lives of Henrietta's dysfunctional survivors.