(Inside Technology.) By Peter Keating and Alberto Cambrosio. 544 pp., illustrated. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2003. $55. ISBN 0-262-11276-0.
This book is a straightforward before-and-after narrative history.Before the 1970s, leukemias and lymphomas were diagnosed bymorphologic means, by inspecting stained blood smears microscopicallyand estimating the developmental stage of the cells. The presenceof a large number of early-stage cells meant a fast-growingtumor and a bad prognosis. From about the mid-1970s onward,flow cytometry and the fluorescence-activated cell sorter enteredthe picture, at first as an experimental system and then graduallyas the centerpiece of a new vantage point from which to quantifymaturing cells by immunophenotyping and to assess their numbersat key stages of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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