Review by Choice Review
Wailoo's choice of Memphis as the setting for this detailed historical account of the African American experience with a specific disease in the political, social, and economic context in which health care is provided to the citizens of this country enabled him to present an informative, though unsettling, scholarly account of the African American life experience throughout the 20th century. Wailoo (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) traces sickle cell anemia from its lack of recognition and identification as a possible molecular problem to its political significance through decades of abundant funding for research, achievement of "celebrity status" arising from attention by numerous celebrities, and the impact of managed care on treatment of this disease. By looking at the attention paid to health care, race relations, and the socioeconomic aspects of Memphis, he has provided great insight to the history of race relations in this country and its impact on health care. An extensive listing of references, organized by chapter, is included at the end of the book. Sources include a variety of written materials as well as interviews with people directly involved with the search for a means of treating this hereditary disease. Graduate students; faculty; researchers; professionals. V. B. Byers emerita, SUNY Upstate Medical University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
From slavery onward, diseases real and imaginary have played significant and complex roles in race relations. Wailoo, professor of social medicine and history at UNC-Chapel Hill, focuses on one disease, sickle cell anemia, in one city, Memphis, to fashion a compelling demonstration of how powerful and significant this underappreciated interaction between illness and race has been, in particular tracing a cycle of ignorance of illness and suffering among blacks, to recognition of the reality of sickle cell disease and back to a disregard for black pain and suffering. American discovery of sickle cell anemia in 1910 was followed by decades of obscurity (some doctors simply denied its existence). But a 1934 report that Memphis led the nation with an 11% infant mortality rate was a difficult turning point, eventually leading to medicine displacing cotton as the city's prime economic focus. From the 1940s to the 1970s, there was a growing acknowledgement of sickle cell disease and an increase in medical services provided to the African-American community (though, according to Wailoo, treating sick black children was an easier racial accommodation on the part of the white establishment than acknowledging issues of black power), culminating in the 1972 Sickle Cell Control Act that brought Memphis $500,000 for research. This high point of celebrity and sympathetic visibility contrasted sharply with the 1990s, when medical authorities began again to question the reality of pain inflicted on sufferers by the disease - due, according to the author, to the establishment's increasing focus on treatment costs and the resurgence of stereotypes about blacks and drug use, in particular (unwarranted) fears that prescribing painkillers would lead to drug addition. This unassuming masterpiece of revelation focuses on a new, more precise lens on the intersection of race, illness and politics. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Wailoo (social medicine, Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) sets forth a history of sickle cell disease (SCD) from the academic perspective of social medicine. In this overly detailed, scholarly examination, Wailoo investigates the entire spectrum of the social, cultural, scientific, economic, political, and, most especially, racial aspects of the disease. He unifies and focuses his narrative on the underlying health history of black Americans from slavery through current-day managed care and the rise of SCD from near-invisibility to a major national medical research effort. In Wailoo's comprehensive telling, the story of SCD in Memphis is the definitive story of race and health in the United States. It is a fascinating narrative based on scholarly hypotheses that bear hints of an academic dissertation. Nonetheless, the book is recommended for academic, medical, and larger public libraries because Wailoo makes clear how SCD and all the issues surrounding it reflect societal crises at the intersection of black culture and American health politics. James Swanton, Harlem Hosp., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
