Trying Times: The Courts, the Historian, and the Contentious Struggle to Define Disease

It’s such an honor to be here tonight to speak with my colleagues and friends about my work over four decades! I would like to dedicate this talk to my mentor, Barbara Rosenkrantz, who died last year and had a profound influence on me and many others in this room (Figure 1). I am very proud of the professional and academic honors which Margaret [Humphreys] just mentioned. But tonight I’d like to talk about another aspect of my professional life that is rarely mentioned in academic settings but of which I am equally proud. As many of you know, Jerry Markowitz, a distinguished professor at the City University of New York (and my former brother-in-law, friend, and colleague for over fifty years) and I have been deeply involved in lawsuits brought by workers, states, and cities against companies accused of exposing workers and the public to industrial pollutants. We have testified in cases brought on behalf of workers suffering from mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis; and people with lymphomas possibly caused by exposures to PCBs. We have testified and consulted in major suits in Rhode Island, Missouri, and California on behalf of children poisoned by lead in paint and emissions from smelters in Missouri and Peru. We have testified and consulted in cases in both the United States and South