The last surviving member of 617 squadron more commonly known as the dambusters. A great and enjoyable journal that reads like a boys own adventure :)

The human body is created astonishingly. Every part and system is precise and perfect in performing its desired functions. Blood is one of the core bases of life. If the blood functioning is disrupted due to any reason, then the consequences can be very severe, chronic, and sometimes fatal. The associated blood diseases sometimes tend to follow a genetic or inherited pattern. The blood abnormality we are about to discuss today is strictly genetic and can be fatal at times.

WHAT IS SICKLE CELL ANEMIA:

Sickle Cell Anemia or Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a blood disease following a genetic trial. In this disease, the regular disc shape of the Erythrocytes becomes abnormal sickle or crescent-shaped. The erythrocytes, due to irregular shape transformation, find it difficult to pass the blood vessels. It also affects the oxygen-carrying capacity of the Red Blood Corpuscles.

The sickle-shaped Erythrocytes become rigid and prone to getting stuck in the blood vessels causing cytological and histological damages within the body.

SYMPTOMS OF SICKLE CELL ANEMIA:

Every medical abnormality is followed by sure signs and symptoms that help in diagnosing the disease. Following the same, the prime symptoms that help in identifying sickle cell anemia are given below:

• Hemolysis: 

Rapid destruction of erythrocytes. 

• Optic Dysfunction:

The patient is observed to suffer from an incurable vision problem as the tiny optic vessels get plugged, causing damages to the retina and the vision automatically.

• Adema:

Swelling and over swelling of hands and feet mainly. In cases, swelling is observed on the whole body.

• Jaundice:

The eyes and skin turn yellow, followed by weakness.

• Frequent Infections

The patient suffers from infection frequently, which ends up weakening the immune system of the patient. Damage of the spleen causes fatal and chronic conditions in the patient.

• Anemia:

Due to the rapid destruction of the erythrocytes, the patient suffers from anemic critical conditions. It is one of the significant symptoms of sickle cell anemia.

CAUSES OF SICKLE CELL ANEMIA:

• Genetic Cause:

Sickle cell anemia is caused by the mutation in the gene that is responsible for carrying the relevant genetic information about the production of hemoglobin (the iron-rich compound that gives the blood its red color, enabling the erythrocytes to carry the oxygen from the lungs throughout the human body.

• Congenital Cause:

The transferring of the mutated gene is also in the body of the fetus,

MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS OF SICKLE CELL ANEMIA: 

Acute Chest Syndrome:

The life-threatening condition in which the sickle cell erythrocytes block the blood vessels of the lungs causing difficulty in breathing. Sometimes it may lead to Pneumonitis (inflammation in the lungs).

Leg Ulcer:

Swelling is observed on the entire body, including the legs and hands particularly. This condition is termed a leg ulcer.

Organ damage:

Lack of oxygen-rich blood in the organs causes dysfunction of the organs, including kidney, liver, spleen, etc. In many observed cases, the deficiency of oxygen-rich blood had been fatal to the patients. 

Eye abnormalities:

Blockage in the eye vessels of the body can cause severe damages to the visions and visuals of the patient.

Neurological Complications:

Oxygen-Rich blood is most important for the proper functioning of our brain. The deficiency of oxygen can cause severe damages to the brain resulting in epilepsy, seizures, and strokes. 

Sometimes the patient is observed to slip into a comma. All of these abnormalities are caused by the blockage of the brain.

Delayed Growth:

The retardation of physical growth is observed in the children specifically. It is a possibility that the children face delayed development in their childhood, but they might retain their growth usually in their adulthood.

Sex maturation is also an evidential complication observed as a consequence of sickle cell anemia.

LABORATORY DIAGNOSIS:

Blood Tests:

As sickle cell anemia is a blood-associated disease, so blood diagnosis is the best cheap and reliable test to diagnose the condition.

• CBC or Complete Blood Count:

Helps in estimating the count of erythrocytes in the blood. Decreased amount of RBCs proves that the patient is facing some severe hemolytic effects.

• Blood Smears:

The formation of blood smears aids in estimating the average and contracted number of cells circulating in the blood.

• Sickle solubility test:

This test helps graph the concentration of hemoglobin (Hb) in the blood. Decreased concentration will increase the possibility of the disease.

TREATMENT:

Bone Marrow Transplant:

Sickle cell anemia is difficult to treat with drugs and medications. The most effective way to cure this disorder of blood is a bone marrow transplant. As the disease causes hemolysis (destruction of RBCs), bone marrow transplant will aid in the formation of new blood cells decreasing the destructions of the cells.

Medications to increase fetal hemoglobin:

Droxia and Hydrea help in increasing the fetal hemoglobin in the body.

Sickle cell anemia can be fatal and can cause death if not treated on time. You can get many resources like Researchomatic, Wikipedia, etc from where you can get more details about the said topic.

I picked this book up primarily because I loved the author’s memoir, The House at Sugar Beach, about growing up in Liberia until political instability and terror forced her family to leave. This book, though, is a biography of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018 and the first democratically elected female head of state in Africa. It’s a good biography, readable and engaging as all the best journalistic work is, and certainly informative though it lacks the humor and personal touch of Cooper’s memoir.

About the first quarter of this relatively short biography (290 pages) covers the first approximately 50 years of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s life, spending a few pages on her childhood before moving on to her marriage, higher education, subsequent divorce from her abusive husband (even though it meant no longer being able to raise most of their children), and her career as a financial bureaucrat. The second quarter focuses more on Liberia’s civil war and the years of coups and atrocities. Johnson Sirleaf was absent from Liberia for much of this time working for financial institutions abroad, but the reader needs to understand something of what was happening in the country to put her presidency in context. Finally, the last half covers her elections and presidency, though the book ends in 2015 and was published in 2017, before she actually left office.

The book is highly readable and offers a lot of explanation to readers who may not know anything about Liberia; Cooper is clearly adept at bridging two cultures. It is an admiring biography, and as far as I can tell an authorized one—Johnson Sirleaf allowed Cooper to follow her around and was interviewed for the book, though Cooper didn’t share her drafts—but Cooper also highlights areas where Johnson Sirleaf made poor or questionable choices. I wasn’t quite sure what to think about all her female supporters who stole their adult sons’ voter IDs to prevent them from voting for her clearly unqualified male opponent, for instance—interestingly to me, Liberian women seemed far more likely to vote for a candidate because of her gender than their American counterparts. But I was glad to see Cooper really dig into Johnson Sirleaf’s achievements in office: the chapter about how she managed to persuade other governments, multinational institutions and private companies to forgive Liberia’s $4.7 billion debt is fantastic and highlights a huge accomplishment that few others could possibly have achieved.

Meanwhile, other reviewers have mentioned that the book deals with some dark subject matter around Liberia’s civil war, and this is true though it isn’t the primary focus of the book. The last 35 pages mostly focus on the Ebola pandemic, which was interesting to read during another pandemic: there was a lot of initial denial around Ebola too, though once people accepted that it was real they seemed to do a good job of taking necessary precautions to wipe it out.

Ultimately, there’s a lot of good information in this book, but there’s more distance from its subject than I would have expected in a semi-authorized biography of someone who’s still alive: I didn’t get much sense of Johnson Sirleaf’s personality, what makes her tick, how the people close to her view her, etc. Maybe she didn’t want her personal life in a book, her family didn’t want to share, and Cooper decided to respect their wishes—hard to say. But while I still blew through the book in just a few days, I think I would have liked it even better with more personality. Cooper credits several people in the acknowledgments with making her ditch her “flip tone” and I wound up wishing she’d kept it. There are a few humorous bits, which were welcome.

But I’d certainly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject, and Johnson Sirleaf is without doubt a tough and impressive woman, though (like everybody else) imperfect. Those who would like a more personal, in-depth and at times humorous story (with some overlapping subject matter) should check out the author’s memoir.

Only time will tell how to interpret events after the end of this book: Johnson Sirleaf stepped down in 2018, allowing for Liberia’s first peaceful transition of power in decades, but then the winner of that election was George Weah (the soccer player), whose vice president is Jewel Taylor (ex-wife of Charles Taylor, the war criminal). Hmm. I hope Cooper will keep on writing books about Liberia; I for one will be happy to keep reading them.

If American voters in 1928 believed that over the next four years they would face an unprecedented economic collapse that would cause enormous social misery, it’s likely that they would have concluded that the man they most needed in the White House was the very person they elected to it. Over the previous decade and a half Herbert Hoover had earned a global reputation as a problem-solving benefactor who had aided Americans stranded in Europe during the First World War, supported Belgians impoverished by German occupation, and provided famine relief for millions in the chaotic postwar environment. His administrative genius was further demonstrated over the course of his eight years of service as Secretary of Commerce in the presidential administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, during which he regulated the new marketplaces created by technology, championed product standardization, and oversaw disaster relief in the Mississippi Valley basin. Yet four years later Hoover would be turned out of office in a landslide even greater than the one he enjoyed when he was voted into it, a damming judgment of his response to the Great Depression.

Herein lies the great enigma of Hoover’s presidency: how is it that such an accomplished humanitarian and administrator could have fallen so short in his response to the Great Depression? It is the question that hangs over any assessment of his career, one that is even more challenging to address given its length and his multifarious achievements. Kenneth Whyte rises to the challenge with a book that encapsulates the range of Hoover’s life and draws from it a sense of his character. A longtime editor and a biographer of the newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, Whyte employs a discerning eye and an adroit pen to the task of drawing out Hoover’s personality and assessing his achievements.

The first of these achievements was Hoover’s rise from adversity. The son of Iowa Quakers, Hoover was orphaned at an early age and forced to live with various relatives. Thought he did not distinguish himself academically his work ethic was evident at an early age, and through his diligent labors he won admission to the newly-created Stanford University. After graduating with a degree in geology, Hoover embarked on an incredibly successful career as a mining engineer. Whyte’s chapters on this part of Hoover’s life are among the best in the book, as he details the brusque management style and oftentimes shady business practices Hoover employed to make a considerable fortune at a young age.

Seeking new challenges, Hoover was preparing to move from London back to California when the outbreak of war in 1914 changed his life dramatically. Boldly stepping up, Hoover soon emerged as a dominant force in humanitarian relief thanks to his managerial skills and his numerous contacts. When the United States entered the war, Hoover was a logical choice to head the food production effort, and by the end of the conflict he had cemented his reputation as a “can-do” figure. Though nominally a Republican, Whyte sees Hoover’s association with the values of Progressivism as far more relevant to understanding him, which he identifies in both Hoover’s approach to his roles as Commerce secretary and as president.

It is in how Hoover viewed his role as president that Whyte finds the source of the problems that bedeviled him. As an apostle of scientific management, Hoover had little experience with or respect for the political game. This attitude proved self-defeating in his dealings with Congress, as his poor relations with them frustrated his ability to achieve the measures he sought. This also led him initially to underestimate Franklin Roosevelt, who with the help of a Democratic Party effort to associate Hoover indelibly with the Depression defeated Hoover when he ran for reelection. Embittered by Roosevelt’s attacks on his record, Hoover spent the remaining thirty-two years of his life in search of redemption, both through championing a new version of American conservatism and by gradually regaining respect for his administrative expertise through his work on a series of commissions.

In writing this book Whyte masters two enormously difficult challenges: encapsulating Hoover’s extensive life within a single volume while simultaneously providing a convincing interpretation of his withdrawn personality. From it emerges a portrait of a gifted and driven individual who succeeded in every field to which he applied himself except the one least suited for his disposition. Where the book suffers is in Whyte’s treatment of the Depression, which he interprets through a monetarist lens; while this highlights several often underappreciated aspects of the crisis, it comes at the cost of glossing over both the miseries people suffered and how they – rather than Hoover’s often contradictory monetary policies – served as the basis for the public’s judgment of Hoover’s failure. This mars what is otherwise an impressive achievement, one that currently stands as the best encapsulation of a complicated man within the confines of a single volume.