Kate's Point of View

Building on the success of Freakonomics, authors Steve D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are at it again. By pooling their knowledge of microeconomics (Levitt) and skills in writing and journalism (Dubner), as well as calling on experts from a range of topics you wouldn’t quite believe exist, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance presents a collection of all the facts you never knew you wanted to know.

Freakonomics was illustrated with charts and graphs and armed readers with trivia that could jumpstart conversations at the dullest of dinner parties. SuperfFreakonomics takes it a step further. This collection was designed to resemble your middle school textbooks. Nearly every colorful page contains some picture, factoid, illustration or, of course, a table or graph. (How else would you explain economics besides tables and graphs?) In addition to making the book more visually entertaining than its predecessor, it also helps readers understand and remember more of the facts Levitt and Dubner painstakingly present.

In a chapter called “How is a Street Prostitute Like a Department Store Santa,” the title is pulled from all of two sentences of text and one illustration. It’s a great example of how SuperFreakonomics makes things memorable. Such a small amount of text, but by embedding a pictures of a team of Santa Clauses smack in the middle of a chapter on prostitution, how could you not remember the two sentences explaining the similarity? (The relationship between these two professions is intentionally omitted here. Why give a spoiler on a strange topic like that?)

While the authors present their work as economics, both Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics bear little resemblance to what many people will remember from their university days. By focusing on microeconomics, the study of market behavior of consumers and companies in an attempt to understand decision-making processes, Levitt and Dubner present more of a collection of pop-economic facts … the entertainment magazine of economics.

SuperFreakonomics is pretty much a guaranteed success, partially because of name recognition but also earned through a solid collection of studies and facts presented in an easy-to-read manner. However, the entertainment magazine comparison does indicate one drawback to this format of book. It is not the type of book you should sit down and read in a week. Rather, it’s meant to be savored, to sit on your coffee table and be enjoyed in small bites. Enjoyed in this way, each reader will be ready to jumpstart a whole new round of awkward dinner party conversations.

As a young mother suffering from cancer in a segregated US, Lacks unknowingly changed the course of medical history. But her identity and contribution to science remained a secret to most of the world.

In 1976, the American magazine Rolling Stone featured an article about Henrietta Lacks and her family. They were also the subject of a 1996 documentary by the BBC called The Way of All Flesh and articles in Ebony and Science80. But not until the publishing of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, has the whole story been shared.

To explain the tremendous impact Lacks had, it is essential to go into the details of her medical history and of medical research. Though that sets up the possibility for a very dull narrative, Skloot deftly explains the material and focuses on the human element in such a way that readers will be sucked in.

In doing research for this story, Skloot painstakingly gains the trust of Lacks’ surviving children, especially her daughter Deborah. Through interviews with them, relatives, physicians and researchers, a story slowly builds.

In the 1950s Lacks was treated for a cancer that was later diagnosed as cervical cancer. Although treated in a segregated ward at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, she received care that was considered to be the best available for African Americans. Despite this, Lacks died as a result of her cancer at the age of 31, leaving behind five children and her husband.

At that same at John Hopkins, George Gey was busily researching how to keep cells alive and growing. It wasn’t until Gey received a sample of Lacks’ cells that he found success. And a lot of it. Lacks’ cells, named HeLa after the first two initials in Lacks’ first and last names, grew at a great rate and didn’t stop. These cells were a huge scientific discovery that would change medical research and patient rights forever.

After a few false starts, Gey developed a way to send samples of HeLa around the world. Researchers were able to use them to create treatments for cancer and AIDS. They made it possible to do tests on the polio vaccine, effects of radiation and safety of various everyday products. Researchers also challenged the rights of patients, experimenting by injecting live patients will HeLa (cancer), which led to more stringent regulations being created.

The part of Lacks’ story that stuck in the mind of her sons was this: Although Johns Hopkins didn’t make any money off of HeLa, other people around the world did. Lots of money. And the Lacks family not only didn’t get a percentage of it, they didn’t even know that the cells had been taken. The family was poor with no health insurance and several members were battling illnesses. Medicine was profiting from their relative’s cells but they weren’t getting to enjoy the benefits of medicine.

The part that Lacks’ daughter Deborah couldn’t help but focus on: Via her cells, Lacks was having an enormous global effect and adding to scientific knowledge, but her own daughter didn’t have a single memory of Lacks.

Although Skloot gives voice to the sons, the focus of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, due to the influence of Deborah, is Henrietta.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot’s first book, takes readers on a journey through history. Readers will be happy to have found this book and to learn of HeLa, which plays such an important role in medicine and research and continue to live on and thrive and to learn about the woman behind those cells.

And so I am enjoying my first ever week off work between Christmas and New Years and spending the whole time getting winded from going up the steps. Wonder Boy goes to work (ha!) and comes home asking what I did. Answer: nothing. “You must be getting stir crazy,” he says. Nope. In fact, yesterday I went out to volunteer at the animal rescue and it did me in!

On the upside, I have watched more Law & Order SVU than I know what to do with and am caught up on reading. I just finished SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. I tell you more about it soon when I do blatant self-promotion and link to the review I am writing for a site in England.

“Site in England?” you ask. Yes, that’s right. I am writing internationally now. I’ll fill you in on that soon.