Saving Henry

Saving Henry is a memoir written by Laurie Strongin Goldberg. In it, Laurie details her and her husband Alan's struggle to care for, and try to save, their son Henry, who has been diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic disease know as Fanconi Anemia. It seems at first that there is hope for Henry, thanks to a cutting edge medical procedure, PGD(preimplantation genetic diagnosis). this procedure would allow Laurie and Alan to give birth to a child without Fanconi who would also be a genetic match for Henry, and transplant stem cells from its umbilical cord to Henry. However, Dr.Hughes, the doctor working with Laurie and Alan, is brought up on federal charges for violating a ban on stem cell research. I must admit at this point, in full disclosure, that my opinion of this book is about as biased as an opinion can be; I know Laurie Strongin and her family well, my mom wrote an article about Henry, and was on the board for the charity founded in his memory(the Hope for Henry foundation) , which was the focus of my mitzvah project of my bar mitzvah. The most interesting thing to me about this book is that Laurie is an incredibly optimistic and cheery person. She has a smile which is as infectious as it is ever-present, and talks with a sort of "bouncy" and cheery tone. Laurie was able to use this positive outlook in dealing with the tragic situation she and Alan found themselves in the center of. Laurie and Alan made sure that although Fanconi Anemia could strip Henry of his health, it could never take away love and joy from his life.