Mercies in disguise
Subtitle: a story of hope, a family's genetic destiny, and the science that rescued them
By: Gina Kolata
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9781250064349
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Moral and ethical aspects; Genetic disorders; Health; Medical genetics; Kuru; Genetic screening
Description: "The phone rings. The doctor from California is on the line. "Are you ready Amanda?" The two people Amanda Baxley loves the most had begged her not to be tested-at least, not now. But she had to find out. If your family carried a mutated gene that foretold a brutal illness and you were offered the chance to find out if you'd inherited it, would you do it? Would you walk toward the problem, bravely accepting whatever answer came your way? Or would you avoid the potential bad news as long as possible? In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times science reporter and bestselling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an almost archetypal family in a small town in South Carolina. A proud and determined clan, many of them doctors, they are struck one by one with an inscrutable illness. They finally discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of events that many saw as providential. Meanwhile, science, progressing for a half a century along a parallel track, had handed the Baxleys a resolution-not a cure, but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease and who did not. And science would offer another dilemma-fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children through an expensive process. A work of narrative nonfiction in the tradition of the The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Mercies in Disguise is the story of a family that took matters into its own hands when the medical world abandoned them. It's a story of a family that had to deal with unspeakable tragedy and yet did not allow it to tear them apart. And it is the story of a young woman-Amanda Baxley-who faced the future head on, determined to find a way to disrupt her family's destiny."--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-250) and index.
Table of contents: title: Part I. A disease; title: Prologue; title: the prophecy; title: "No goddamn bastard on earth has ever seen a disease like this thing"; title: Revelation; title: An uncertain inheritance; title: Truth like science fiction; title: Birthright; title: Insomnia; title: Naming the problem; title: No return; title: Tested; title: Part II. Amanda Baxley: the next generation; title: A life transformed; title: Options; title: A foreign land; title: The envelope; title: Of two minds; title: A unique way; title: "We have no other options"; title: Prescription fertility; title: New lives; title: Carrying forth; title: Epilogue.