Curved Air
A Biography of Sickle Cell Anemia and the Quest to Cure the First Molecular Disease
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
How sickle cell anemia led the quest to edit the human genome while patients endured decades of racial discrimination and medical neglect.
In December 1904, Walter Clement Noel, a dental student from Grenada, was admitted to a Chicago hospital with fever, jaundiced eyes, and ulcers covering his legs. When doctors examined his blood under a microscope, they were puzzled by his sickle-shaped cells. His case became enshrined in the annals of medicine as the first report of sickle cell anemia, a fatal disease that starves the body’s organs of oxygen, causing excruciating pain.
In Curved Air, Kevin Davies chronicles the story of sickle cell anemia from its ancient origins in Sub-Saharan Africa to its central role in the development of human genome editing, revealing how one of the world’s most famous genetic diseases became its most neglected. Sickle cell anemia was the first disease to be attributed to a molecular anomaly and the first to be diagnosed prenatally with DNA testing. Yet for decades, patients, many of whom are Black, were denied lifesaving care by health providers quick to dismiss them as drug seekers. It was only after a group of researchers in the US and Europe partnered with biotech companies, physicians, and their patients that hope arrived in the form of a revolutionary gene-editing therapy: CRISPR.
A story of failure and breakthroughs, heartbreak and hope, Curved Air is a celebration of the scientists, physicians, and patients who are finally catching a glimpse of the cure they’ve waited generations to see.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Davies (Editing Humanity), executive editor of The CRISPR Journal, delivers a captivating history of the century-long effort to understand and treat sickle cell disease, a molecular disorder that leads to misshapen red blood cells that cause excruciating pain and organ damage. SCD arose in sub-Saharan Africa thousands of years ago, Davies explains, and the 1949 discovery that it's caused by an inherited genetic mutation transformed scientists' understanding of genetics. Despite sickle cell being one of the world's most famous genetic diseases, patients, most of whom are Black, "suffered in silence" for decades, according to Davies. Research was continually underfunded, and patients were often perceived as drug seekers and turned away from care. The emergence of the gene-editing technology CRISPR, which received FDA approval for treating SCD in 2023, is now "offering new hope" to the community, Davies writes. His narrative juxtaposes the experiences of Victoria Gray, the first SCD patient to be treated with CRISPR, and Brittany Hightower, an SCD patient who went viral in 2021 after filming herself being turned away from a hospital while experiencing an acute pain crisis. (She died 15 months later.) Davies skillfully translates complex genetics into accessible prose and effectively connects scientific advances to broader questions of race and medical ethics. It's an illuminating account of scientific progress and medical inequity.
