RET Skeptic Book Club
Sunday 4:00 - 6:00 pm
September 12, 2021 Sunday 4:00 – 6:00 pm
Video conference meeting using zoom
Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life
by Katherine E. Standefer
What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator. In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots. From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated. Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.
*****************************************************************
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85948484072?pwd=bThzbDE4NFRYZHVNL2JORFJDUk9IUT09
Meeting ID: 859 4848 4072
Passcode: 337850
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,85948484072#,,,,*337850# US (Chicago)
+19292056099,,85948484072#,,,,*337850# US (New York)
Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 859 4848 4072
Passcode: 337850
Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kbRPZljNbF