Product Description

At the cutting edge of science, "Cell of Cells" charts the race to put the stem cell to use. From a laboratory in the Sahara, where one problem is sand in the Petri dishes, to an Israeli laboratory that narrowly escapes a terrorist bomb, stem cells have gone global. Stem cells are not only being studied in an escalating number of laboratories - often unencumbered by public controversy and legal restrictions - but they are also being put to use. In Japan, a respected doctor uses them to increase the size of women's breasts. In Texas, stem cells rejuvenate dying hearts. In China, clinics offer stem cells to patients with everything from paralysis to brain trauma. Cynthia Fox illuminates the reality and promise of stem cell therapies, and illustrates how the extensive, fervent experimentation currently under way is causing a revolution; both in the human body and in the international body politic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #620319 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 560 pages

The Times Literary Supplement, July 2, 2008
"Cell of Cells is a wonderful book for the biologist, containing hundreds of interviews, thoroughly referenced citations, and careful notes. It is a very entertaining and readable presentation, replete with charming and highly personal stories about the researchers in the world of stem cells and their venues, addressing these issues and many more with scholarship and thoroughness."

The Lancet, April 21, 2007
"Peopled with quirky characters and crowded with strange and beautiful places, Cell of Cells reads like the best travel writing, but the author doesn't stint on the science, or the politics, of her subject. Cynthia Fox spent years touring the world's stem cell hotspots, staking out labs from Egypt to Israel to Singapore, and peering over the shoulders of scientists and surgeons. Her exhaustive legwork has produced a highly entertaining book. Dozens of key stem cell scientists get personality profiles, as well as a thorough accounting of their work and thought, including Israel's Shimon Slavin, the bone marrow transplantation pioneer who is now using stem cells to create dual immune systems; Jerry Yang of the University of Connecticut's Center for Regenerative Biology, the first scientist to clone an adult farm animal; and Harvard's Jonathan Tilly, who overturned decades of medical dogma by demonstrating the existence of mammalian oocyte stem cells. We get to know patients treated with stem cells, and are offered a surgeon's-eye view of their operations.Fox's often wry tone is ideal for capturing the excitement, and the hype, that accompany any promising medical advance. Fascinatingly, she was researching the book during the spectacular fall of Seoul National University researcher Hwang Woo Suk, whose reports of making the world's first human cloned stem cells were eventually exposed as fraud. We follow Hwang on his way up, basking in the attention of admirers at international meetings and whisking Fox through his state-of-the art lab. And when the time comes to tell of Hwang's disgrace, Fox does an excellent job of helping the reader keep the characters involved, and their misdeeds, straight. Cell of Cells opens with the words of researcher Susan Fisher: "Science is like a stream of water. It finds a way." And Fox provides us with a compelling account of just what this means in today's world of "presidential lines", Singaporean billions, and scientists as rock stars. Let's hope she brings us along on her next voyage."

Science, July 20, 2007
"With a journalist's eye, Fox details her interviewees' offices, labs, mannerisms, and habits--even the views they see each day. Those details, impossible to obtain from a scientific paper, make the researchers come alive. Moving on to Singapore to describe stem cell work in the lavish research city of Biopolis and then on to Australia, Japan, China, and Korea, Fox accurately reveals the sociological and technical issues that stem cell research involves. For nonscientists, she gives pithy but effective explanations without disturbing the flow; for scientists, the book is a smooth read because Fox does not dumb down scientific terminology. The knowledge she acquired in her journeys is astonishing in range and depth, and she cites papers from the primary literature as rungs on the ladder to her overview. (The book includes 43 pages of references and interview notes.) Fox creates indelible images. Her fly-on-the-wall description of a kidney transplant and chimeric stem cell operation at Massachusetts General Hospital is riveting, as is the almost smelly account of extracting oocytes for tissue cloning from pigs. In Jerry Yang's lab, she witnesses the Star Wars-like drama of remotely controlling pipettes to enucleate oocytes for somatic cell nuclear transfer. She tells the desperate stories of patients with heart failure, autoimmune disease, kidney failure, and Duchenne's dystrophy. She also warns of the trap of unethical, unscientific stem cell treatments in locations such as Moscow, Ukraine, and the Caribbean.... The author's fascination with "science trouncing science fiction," the potential of stem cells, and our desire to learn what happens next make this a rare can't-put-it-down science book. It reminds me of the fun of first reading The Double Helix. There are fights between and within labs, gossip, and different cultures, but there are also knowledge and exhilarating progress. Cell of Cells is a serious book, spiced up by Fox's wit and storytelling."