Rebecca Skloot (2010)

Part scientific history, part social history, this is as much a book about modern American social exclusion as it is about one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of all time.

The science is nowhere near as well-known as it should be. The cancerous cells of a dying African-American woman became “HeLa”, the first “immortal” cell line, and at a stroke revolutionise the study of diseases. Using just one of Skloot’s several examples, HeLa allowed proper rigorous comparisons of different treatment regimes for the polio vaccine. Since then, HeLa has been at the centre of almost every major medical trial and breakthrough, and is still a critical component of education and research fifty years later.

HeLa was given away for free to researchers in an act of enormous generosity – and also, it has to be said, because it happened in an era before the major profit motive invaded medicine. But that is of no comfort to the descendants of Henrietta Lacks, the cells’ original “donor”. Not only are there serious questions of consent and the ethics of openly sharing material that can be used to identify and profile the likely medical histories of her descendants; they remain so poor that they live in situations almost unrecognisable as the 20th century Western world, dependent on charity because of lack of health insurance. Indeed, Skloot’s descriptions of “Lackstown”, where everyone is related and sharing a common lack of basic services, healthcare, or employment, is the most riveting part of the book. In many ways it evokes some of the Victorian reportage – People of the Abyss, The, for example – but without any ambition to bring about similar social change. The Lacks’ conditions are described, deplored, and in some sense accepted in a way that’s quietly troubling.

The last section of the book is also fascinating, reviewing the continuing history of consent as applied to tissue samples where rights of privacy and ownership collide with research goals and the public good. Skloot does a good job in showing how inherently complicated these issues are, and doesn’t fall into the trap of taking simple sides.

4/5. Finished Tuesday 18 August, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Walter M. Miller Jr. (1959)

Post-apocalyptic science fiction meets an historical analogy of the Middle Ages in an enjoyable, if a little disjointed, tale of what happens when the church once again becomes a repository of learning. The Order of Leibowitz transcribes the printed matter that’s survived a nuclear exchange and the subsequent mass murder of any scientists, engineers, or intellectuals left. That included the Order’s founder, a scientist driven the religion by his experiences.

The book episodically covers several centuries, starting with the experiences of a novice’s discovery of an ancient fallout shelter that leads to Leibowitz’ canonisation; through the later battles of small statelets fighting in the ruins alongside the recovery of scientific knowledge from the disjointed artefacts and texts; and culminating in the destruction of a later civilisation again unable to manage the existence of weapons of mass destruction but managing (this time) to send out emissaries to the stars.

The view Miller takes of the church is quite balanced, neither fully supportive nor dismissing it as archaic. And on balance it seems likely that the church and church forms would survive a holocaust of anything did: it’s the only institution, along with the universities, to have survived continuously from the Middle Ages. The end result sees humanity unable to move beyond repeating history, learning little new science and no new ethical or social self-knowledge along the way. In this it’s at least partly a product of its time (being first published in 1959), but the fact that the risks it explores remain equally valid today is itself enough to have it read more often.

3/5. Finished Tuesday 4 August, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Rod Liddle (2014)

Definitely a book that’s passed through political correctness and come out the other side.

There seem to be a couple of issues drawing Rod Liddle’s ire. The first is the narcissism of modern society, which he skewers mercilessly. The second is the emergence of a super-class of highly advantaged upper-middle-class families who are radically better able to access society’s goods than others. Their advantages come from multiple sources – public schooling, living in better areas, social networks that can help access, and so forth – but also (Liddle claims) from a more surprising source: changes to the law that seem egalitarian but work to reinforce privilege.

Is super-class privilege now so entrenched as to be immovable? If you’re looking for answers to this, or even some vague suggestions, you won’t find them. But as a source of dinner-party factoids and telling phrases, this is a winner. People “who have had their struggles too” will definitely be part of my vocabulary from now on.

4/5. Finished Monday 13 July, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Robert Mason (1983)

A raw and largely uncensored account of the life of a “slick” (troop-carrying) helicopter pilot’s life in Vietnam. It’s a great mix of war story, flight training manual, memoir, and anti-war polemic, gradually shifting between these various facets as time goes on.

Mason doesn’t glamorise the war or his own part in it; nor does he gloss over details that must have been uncomfortable to write (and for his family and friends to read). What comes through strongly is heroism on a small scale and pointlessness on a large scale: repeatedly and bravely storming the same pieces of territory as the “strategy” of attrition wears down both sides. In between are some wonderful flight scenes and descriptions of helicopter tactics that will fascinate any technically-inclined reader.

The epilogue covering his return from Vietnam is poignant and revealing of the challenges that many veterans faced as they tried (and often failed) to re-integrate themselves. It’s an inconvenient truth that many societies — and the UK is no better than the US in this — fail to deal with their troops well once they’re out of the field, no matter how much they applauded them while the war was on.

4/5. Finished Sunday 5 July, 2015.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)