A Commotion in the Blood: Life, Death, and the Immune System (The Sloan Technology Series)

Rating:
Summary: Accessible to all
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Hall's account of the development of immunotherapy. I read it cover to cover. You need not be an immunologist to enjoy this book, but you might want to become one after.

Rating:
Summary: Accessible to all
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Hall's account of the development of immunotherapy. I read it cover to cover. You need not be an immunologist to enjoy this book, but you might want to become one after.

Rating:
Summary: a romp through tumor immunology
Review: Stephen S. Hall's A Commotion in the Blood: Life, Death, and The Immune System focuses on the development of immunotheraphy, particularly as the immune system has been used to treat cancer. Although ostensibly a dense, esoteric subject, Hall makes this all a great read. Science books for non-specialist readers carry an unavoidable tension - does the author focus primarily on the personalities involved, or the science. In my experience, a solely biographical approach leaves the science too much a "black box", amazing but inexplicable to the reader. Focus only on the science leaves the text unavoidably dense and lacking in "human" interest. Hall handles this tension perfectly by writing a series of mini-biographies of the leaders in the field, while leaving ample space to describe the science itself. By so doing, the key scientists become real people, and their quests tales of suspense, with life and death consequences. Hall manages ably to make the medicine accessible to the general reader, and has a fine gift for avoiding jargon or specialists' language.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent -- medical reporting at its best
Review: This four-part book tells of cancer immunotherapy with: (1) Coley's toxins around the turn of the century; (2) interferon after its discovery in 1957: (3) T cell growth factor (interleukin-2) after its cloning in 1983; and (4) tumor vaccines in the 1990's. There is more detail than you think you want to know; but after getting into the book, you don't want it to end. Readers looking for additional insights might consider "Biotechnology Backstage" from Kabel Publishers, which covers the rise and fall of Cetus Corporation (a story Steve Hall does not tell but says is worth telling) and the dawn of gene therapy (which spun off the use of interleukin-2 to grow tumor infiltrating lymphocytes at the National Cancer Institute).

Rating:
Summary: a romp through tumor immunology
Review: This is an engaging read! An excellent introduction for the reader curious about the history of cancer biology/immunology especially from the standpoint of clinical therapies. It also provides a glimpse of the inside workings of research institutes and scientific collaborations. The only reservation I have is that the prose tends to the purple but that is not too great a distraction from the skillful storytelling. Read it!

Rating:
Summary: excellent but bothersome
Review: This is well-written and generally solid, but has a couple of flaws. The biggest is that the author seems to have been taken in by some researchersd who most likely were sources. The result: the book gives far too much credence to the work of an early 20th century doctor named Coley, whose family has funded research since and has campaigned for credit. Coley's work, while creative and provocative-- for which he deserves credit-- was not good science, and the book made it sound as if it was true. This troubled me throughout my reading. The writer also seems to take some pretty hard (and unfair) shots at a prominent current researcher, Steve Rosenberg. Again, the author was most likely listening too closely to a couple of sources. Rosenberg is far more likely to win a Nobel Prize than to fade into nothingness, as the author implies. He was the first person to stimulate the immune system to cure certain cancers. Nonetheless, this is a first-rate book, and if I didn't know anything about the subject (which I do) I would have enjoyed it even more than I did even including the flaws.