| Birth Date: | 30 April 1937 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Education: | Columbia University (BA) Harvard University (PhD) |
| Profession: | Historian Historian as Protagonist |
| Field: | American History Social History History of medicine |
| Work Institutions: | Columbia University Columbia Medical School |
David Jay Rothman (April 30, 1937 ā August 31, 2020) [1] was professor of History at Columbia University and of Social Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He founded and served as the president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP). Rothman's work focused on American social history, the history of medicine and current health care practices. His research also explored human rights in medicine, including organ trafficking, AIDS, and the ethics of research in developing countries.
David Rothman was born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in an orthodox Jewish family, graduating from the Yeshiva of Flatbush in 1954. Rothman earned his B.A. from Columbia University in 1958 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1964.[2] [3]
After earning his Ph.D., Rothman returned to Columbia and, upon publication of his dissertation Politics and Power, in 1967, he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. He rose to the rank of Professor of History in1971.[4]
In 1971 Rothman published The Discovery of the Asylum, which explores mental hospitals, prisons, and almshouses. The book was co-winner of the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association. According to a 2019 review, the book "effectively launched the contemporary field of prison history. Rothman traced the first modern prisons' (1820sā1850s) roots to the post-Revolution social turmoil and reformers' desire for perfectly ordered spaces."[5]
In 1984, together with Sheila Rothman, he published The Willowbrook Wars, which studied the landmark class action lawsuit challenging inhumane conditions at the Willowbrook asylum. The case established a standard of care for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities (IDD) and was in the vanguard of the civil rights movement for people with disabilities. The book follows the implementation of the consent decree and the return of the residents to the community. According to a 2005 review, the book "shows that even in a democracy, [those with IDD] well-being depends on those who are willing to advocate for them in institutional, legal, and political systems. This book tells the story of advocacy on their behalf, those persons who advocated for them, how they did it, who resisted change and why, and ultimately what happened. It is a social history not of an individual client but of a class of clients, the Willowbrook class." Furthermore, the reviewer notes that: "The quality of the research, as seen in the authors' ready access to individuals and records, and their narrative of events and descriptions of situations, is remarkable."[6]
In the course of conducting research for The Willowbrook Wars, Rothman learned that many residents had been purposefully infected with Hepatitis B.[7] Concurrently, the Columbia University Medical School decided to expand to include classes on the social and ethical issues physicians would be facing in their medical practices and research laboratories. Rothman was selected to be the inaugural Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine and Director of Center for The Study of Society and Medicine.
Under Rothman's leadership, the Center focused on how the history of medicine informed current health policy, the inherent ethical dilemmas in human experimentation and modern day drug trials, and the ways new technologies altered the practice of medicine and medical decision making.[8] Rothman authored numerous articles during this period and published two books. The first, Strangers at the Beside, studied the history of how law and bioethics transformed medical decision. The second book, Beginnings Count, explored how medical technology, historically and in the present day, were altering clinical research and practice.
In 2000, Rothman published Medical Professionalism; Focusing on the Real Issues. With an endowment from the Open Society Institute and George Soros, Rothman founded the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) in 2003. He and Sheila Rothman co-authored Marketing HPV Vaccine, which was published in 2009. Also in 2009, Professional Medical Associations and Their Relationships with Industry: A Proposal for Controlling Conflicts of Interest was published.[9]
He also co-authored From Disclosure to Transparency: The Use of Company Payment Data, published in 2010. Medical Communication Companies and Industry Grants was published in 2013 and Political Polarization of Physicians in the United States: An Analysis of Campaign Contributions to Federal Elections, 1991 Through 2012 in 2014.[10]
Rothman co-chaired two task forces. The recommendations of these task forces were published in 2006 in the Journal of the American Medical Association under the title Health Industry Practices that Create Conflicts of Interest: A Policy Proposal for Academic Medical Centers.
Together with the Open Society Foundations, Rothman convened a task force to address physician involvement in detention, interrogation, and torture. A resulting report entitled Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror was published in November 2013.
Rothman lived in New York City with his wife, Sheila M. Rothman, with whom he frequently co-authored publications. He had two children. He had two children: Matthew and Micol.