Welcome to Litsy!

Almost 20 hours of driving ahead of us over the next week. Should finally finish our current audiobook

Day 5 - #Nonfiction #GratefulReads

In the nonfiction genre I like to read about true stories.

This book! This is a great book. I came away so torn though. Her cells are used all over the world in medical research, they helped cure polio. But her family can't afford to go to the doctor? The story is heartbreaking, but its a great one.

So, because of Carrel, stem-cell research got a bad name when it could have done so much good. Granted he did fudge the experiment since his heart didn't live as long as he said, but he did grow a heart from cells. I wonder what would have happened if he hadn't been a crazy Nazi. How advanced would organ transplantation be today had it never gotten a bad name?

I'm only about 5 chapters into this book but omg. I cannot believe the amount of dishonesty behind some of the biggest advancements in medicine. The cells taken from this woman for a biopsy doubled every 24 hours and didn't die. The doctor spread the word, and others doctors wanted in on it. Almost 70 years later, there are more of her cells now than were ever in her body, and her children never knew & couldn't afford health insurance.

Good morning! 🌞 After spending almost 30 hours at the school for PT conferences over the last 2 days, and writing/ peer reviewing essays for my own classes, I got a much needed day off.

I'm going to spend my morning in bed with coffee, my blanket that @Lucas.Rencher made, and a new book! 🤗📚

http://henriettalacksfoundation.org/

The author of this book also started the http://henriettalacksfoundation.org/ to help those who have contributed to science without benefit to themselves. It‘s very interesting for anyone interested and wants to take a look.

Updated after guidance from our team leader, corrected pt total below.

For #TeamStoker
- 2 pts for falling under our theme. There was blood, lots of it. Mad scientists experimenting on the sick & infirmed in the asylums of the 40‘s-50‘s. People are truly the scariest of creatures!
- 1 pt for posting
Total: 3 pts!
#Scarathlon
 @TheReadingMermaid

This book is a #MUSTRead! Henrietta Lacks cells were taken from her body, without her consent and grown in a lab for years after she passed away from cancer. They still grow today. They have been used in innumerable medical advances from the polio vaccine to experiments with cell cloning, shot into space and bombed in atomic tests to see how cells reacted... they have literally traveled the globe and far beyond. Without her cells, ... (Cont.⤵️)

...”most infants born in the United States since the late sixties, when states started mandating the screening of all newborns for genetic diseases.”

^So in case you think it doesn‘t effect you, it‘s going to infect us all!

Honestly, this is a great argument for universal health care, if you take our tissues and cells to develop everything from new procedures to new medicines, we at least should be able to afford those treatments. 🙄

So you can‘t profit from your cells, but a company can get a patent on what they see in there and then limit its uses.... and testing....for an ENTIRE GENE!

But I see 2 HUGE flaws with this original logic:

1 - in the age of DNA, your unique code is in every one of those cells & they are uniquely yours, and traceable to you. You can‘t count them, even tumors, as just random scraps/waste.

2 - Not everyone does benefit. Your cells may make medical advances, but without health care you may never be able to utilize those advances yourself. So the benefits are only for those wealthy enough to afford them.

This book will not count as for our #Scarathlon theme @TheReadingMermaid , but boy it should! It‘s full of shady medical experiments, some grave robbing, some very human vampires making off with cells and blood samples, and some Frankenstein worthy cells that continue to grow to this day, infect other cell cultures like crazy, and like the ghost of their former owner will continue to #haunt medical science forever.

#TeamStoker

Looking forward to this true story of Henrietta Lacks. Started this today whilst at the farm with the kids. Our animal tours done the kids let off steam playing in the playground whilst I read. Only thing, we were 10 mins too long and almost were locked in!! A grumpy cafeteria lady opened the doors for us just in time before I was about to climb a fence after the kids, picnic bags and stroller had been hoisted over. Oh, the public debasement!!

“Sonny had a quintuple bypass in 2003, when he was fifty-six years old—the last thing he remembered before falling unconscious under the anesthesia was a doctor standing over him saying his mother‘s cells were one of the most important things that had ever happened to medicine. Sonny woke up more than $125,000 in debt because he didn‘t have health insurance to cover the surgery.”

“When Christoph projected Henrietta‘s cells on the monitor in his lab a few days earlier, Deborah said, “They‘re beautiful.” She was right. Beautiful and otherworldly—glowing green and moving line water, calm and ethereal, looking precisely like heavenly bodies might look. They could even float through the air.”

“The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres indefinitely. This explained the mechanics of HeLa‘s immortality: telomerase constantly rewound the ticking clock at the end of Henrietta‘s chromosomes so they never grew old and never died.”

“...a pair of researchers... discovered that human-mouse hybrids lost their human chromosomes over time, leaving only the mouse chromosomes. This allowed scientists to begin mapping human genes to specific chromosomes by tracking the order in which genetic traits vanished. If a chromosome disappeared and production of a certain enzyme stopped, researchers knew the gene for that enzyme must be on the most recently vanished chromosome.”

This nonfiction story was unbelievable and amazing! On one end the author did an exceptional job of highlighting the science and advances surrounding the use of Henrietta Lacks‘s cells. On the other is the - just as exceptional and heartbreaking - story of Henrietta‘s family and their search for justification for the hijacking of her cells without consent and the need for the world to know who she was as a person. Excellent audiobook! 🌟🌟🌟🌟

#RedRoseSeptember #adayinthelife

The day doctors took her cells without her permission launched a medical revolution.

This is a mesmerizing story that had to be told.An African-American woman living in Baltimore in 1950 goes to John Hopkins Hospital only to discover she has cervical cancer. Physicians discover that she has ‘super cells‘ that can be used for research. Without her permission, the hospital harvests her cells & sells them for millions to other researchers. Through all this Henrietta & her family live in abject poverty with no available health care

Tsundoku, pt.1:

Sanctuary by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
The Swan in the Evening by Rosamund Lehman
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch
Talking with Children About Things that Matter
War Games by Linda Polman
Marxism: Essential Writings

Have you read and enjoyed any of these? Trying to motivate myself to get to reading more again! 📚

Compiling a list of books for #24in48

Lives up to the hype and then some. Great book!

Finally got around to reading this! Beyond interesting. Science is amazing. When you read the history of these cells you can see both sides of who it helps and who it affects. Great read.

@TheBookHippie I found the Coates, and both are on their way to you. The Skloot is a little worn, but better than I remembered. The Coates is like new.

Looking for these books for my kiddos that made Honors English :if you have a copy you‘re willing to part with let me know. (You are required to purchase your own books and at risk youth have no resources ...and usually are afraid to get a library card. If you want to send one my way and need my addy email me social@bookhippie.com I‘ve hunted and thrifted here and found many copies just need a couple more. Thought I‘d try here too) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

This book started off as one to fill some time waiting for another book in the library, I was drawn into Henrietta's story and the debate of cell ownership. I never knew the importance of HeLa cells or what they were. Thank you Rebeccca Skloot for telling her story.

I‘ve been MIA on here but excited to be back. Turns out having 2 jobs and doing graduate school leaves you very run down lol. Excited to be back and will try to post more. Here‘s a required reading for my research methods course. #keeponkeepingon

Not bad, I don‘t want the soso to make it seem like I hated it, I think my expectations were too high after years of being sure I‘d love it but not getting round to it, so I wound up disappointed. Great concept, subject, important to write and learn about, but I wasn‘t crazy about the writing style and found the structure odd, which made it less than perfect after I‘d read such glowing reviews. Not a bad book and I‘d probably still recommend

Sorry I‘ve been quiet! I haven‘t been feeling great (maybe a cold or maybe just feeling run down) and I‘m still resting my ankles so #bookfitnesschallenge is still on hold. I‘m still motivated and excited for round 2 @wanderinglynn but im on the bench right now, which is okay, I‘m seeing the rest as part of my overall fitness.

Just arrived in Yorkshire for my cousin-once-removed‘s birthday weekend and getting some reading in in my hotel room

Had to hit up the library sale since it's my day off. 🤓 I always think I'm going to be a hermit until it's halfway through the day and I get stir crazy. 😂

Road trip

Up next! Been meaning to get to this one for a while.

#StarTrekSummerMay I read this book for bookclub and again when my son studied medical #ethics and I‘m still not sure how to wrap my head around the injustices perpetrated against Henrietta Lacks. I‘m outraged by the medical establishment yet wonder what do we “owe” and how do we compensate the descendants. I believe there must be a way to #cometogether #BeatleMaynia

Books finished this month- 23 Total 😁
✳ 14 Books (4,564 pages read)📚
✏ 5 Library Books, 7 ebooks, 2 from my shelves
✳ 9 Audiobooks (61:57 listening hours) 🎧

➡ Fiction= 9 books ➡ NonFiction= 3 books
➡ YA= 4 books ➡ Juv= 4 books
➡ GN= 3 books

My favorite this month is the tagged book. Highly recommend if you haven't read it.

I woke up to wet snow—BOOOOOO—so I did this morning‘s #audiorun on the treadmill. Thankfully, everything had mostly dried up by the late afternoon, so I was able to finish this book on Casey‘s outdoor walk. #litsywalkers

Hoping for some good non-fiction reads. Asking for a campus reading program. Think mostly 18-21 year olds who are coming from very different backgrounds and are sometimes reluctant readers. I wish we could get the tagged book but we don‘t have access to it with enough e-copies so I‘m looking for something else gripping like this! #nonfiction #suggestionsplease

I woke up with such a terrible migraine that I was stuck in bed until 11:30. Thank goodness for audiobooks; I couldn‘t fall back asleep OR stand to open my eyes for more than a few seconds, but I still got some reading done once I was able to reach my phone and my Bluetooth speaker.

I managed an #audiowalk under the dull grey sky once things let up, too. #litsywalkers

I did some EXCITING #audiocleaning on this Saturday night—which is a hard thing to take a picture of, so here‘re my bookish tracking supplies neatly arranged BESIDE my record player instead of on top of it. Now I can listen to my records again! Hurray!

I‘m loving this book, too. It‘s full of awful things, but Skloot tells it well whether she‘s focused on the Lacks family or the science.

My #audiowalk took me past an Open House by a locally famous realtor. This lady looked eager to buy. #litsywalkers

1. Yes, unfortunately.
2. Actually, Litsy. The reading community here is so inspiring!
3. Any dystopian community.
4. I love the title and cover of THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS (which is an amazing book and you should read it if you haven‘t)!
5. @stacybmartin @whatshesreadingnow @derr.liz

#wondrouswednesday

I have owned this book far longer than I care to admit. Lately I've been in a slump, starting books I like, but just can't seem to stay focused on. However, this book hooked me from the beginning.

I love the mix of science/medical writing with a heartfelt story of the family Henrietta left behind. In a genetics lab in college we actually used HeLa cells for several experiments and until this book, I had no idea of the story behind those cells. 5⭐

Facinating and disturbing at the same time. An extrordinary story about a woman who's life was put under a microscope in more ways then one.

A wonderful and thoroughly engrossing account of the origin of HeLa cells, which have been used by most scientists to study cell development and functioning, as well as develop cures for many debilitating diseases. This book greatly humanizes science, yet does not sugar coat the ethical issues endemic to the field. Who “owns” human tissue and the resulting medicines developed from said biological specimens? A must read!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks #bookclubfriendlyreads #day23 #riotgrams

Fascinating & Eye Opening. 👀 A rollercoaster of emotions, and contradictory feelings. I couldn't put it down.

#BlackHistoryMonth #Blitsy