I finally read it, The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks and I was glad that he was able to show, as clearly as possible, who pays the price when scientists fail to make themselves understood.
It is a fascinating science popularisation book that follows the story of the HeLa cell line, used for research in almost every laboratory in the world, and the story of the family of the patient from whom the first cells were harvested. Henrietta's daughter Deborah, still in poverty and lacking a high school education, tries to find out decades later what happened to her mother's cells. She asked a researcher involved in studying the cell line that came from her mother and this was the answer she got:
"When she asked McKusick [the researcher - n.m] to explain more about cells, he gave her a book he had published called Medical geneticswhich was to become one of the most important studies in the field. He told her that from it she would learn everything she wanted to know [...] The book was full of complicated statements, giving explanations of Henrietta's cells that said Their atypical histology may correlate with the unexpectedly malignant behavior of the carcinoma" and something about correlates of tumour species."
If you don't quite understand what this is all about, try to imagine what Henrietta's daughter could understand.
"It took Deborah a long time to even read magazines, because she had to stop frequently to look up words in the dictionary."
I noted the passage because I recognized a way in which communication in the scientific sphere is very often treated: read the article/read the journal/see the poster/read this 800-page treatise and you will understand.
The researcher also gave him an autograph on the book.
PS: Thank you Publica Publishing House because he gave it to me as a gift. I recommend the whole Publica scientific book series.
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