I was told by many to read this book. That it would be a great read, a difficult read, and one worth my time.

It was okay, I thought. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth reading. If nothing else, these quotes - like nuggets found in the cold Northern rivers, were worth the effort to find.

“Many scientists believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment” (pg 30).

“When I saw those toenails I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh jeez, she’s a real person. I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom paining those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we’d been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I’d never thought of it that way” (pg. 91).

“Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white” (pg 97).

“The worst thing you can do to a sick person is close the door and forget about him” (pg 276).

Grade: C+

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