government to the lead-poisoning epidemic. Herbert Needleman, of course, is a hero for public health practitioners, both for his pioneering research as well as his willingness to confront powerful forces that sought to undermine his work. We are forever grateful for his advice over the years. Two of the early pioneers, then young researchers, Philip Landrigan and Ellen Silbergeld, were always supportive and enthusiastic about our efforts, helping us understand how important it was to get the science right and always explaining how their scientific work was part of a broader effort to improve the lives of Americans.
Over the years, chance encounters played a role that could not possibly be predicted. New York’s subway system, always a source of amusements and interactions among the city’s citizens, led us to strike up morning conversations with Robert Mellins, a professor of pediatrics at Columbia. Through these discussions we learned that he began his career with the U.S. Public Health Service in Chicago, documenting and treating lead-poisoned children. We had referred to his work, but only through the happy accident of meeting him on the 7:30 AM Broadway local did we put two and two together. He soon sent us his personal files from the early 1950s, which again gave us insight into the importance of lead in the lives of pediatricians and public health workers during that decade and beyond.
It is not uncommon to hear plaintiffs’ attorneys be denigrated as “ambulance chasers” solely interested in exploiting the legal system and their clients. But over the years we have developed a very different view of plaintiffs’ lawyers, many of whom decided to represent workers, children, and consumers, people who otherwise would never have had a voice in the courts or the history books. In fact, many of the lawyers we met are truly public health advocates dedicated to their clients, particularly the children. Neil Leifer, Jack McConnell (who has since been appointed by President Obama as a federal district court judge for the District of Rhode Island), Fidelma Fitzpatrick, Robert McConnell, and Jonathan Orent not only played central roles in the historic Rhode Island lawsuit but also were critical in providing poisoned children and their parents a public voice in what all too easily could have been a closed discussion among professionals, politicians, and industry lawyers. We are so grateful for their willingness to provide documents and oral histories of their experiences. It was a special pleasure to meet with Sheldon Whitehouse, then attorney general of Rhode Island and now U.S. senator from that state. Laura Holcolm, the senior paralegal for Motley Rice, deserves special mention. Her vast knowledge of the lead industry’s archive is itself truly irreplaceable. Her memory, generosity, friendship, humor, and good will were critical to our research.
We asked attorneys for the lead industry for interviews but they politely declined. Suzanne Shapiro and Saul Kerpelman, the attorneys who first brought suit against Johns Hopkins, were forthcoming and generous with their time and documents. Gerson Smoger, the main attorney in a historic lawsuit by citizens of Herculaneum, Missouri, against Fluor Corporation, which owned the lead smelter that polluted the town, provided us with unfettered access to important documents regarding the history of the Lead Industries Association, the International Lead Zinc Research Organization, and the smelter industry.
This is the third book we have published with the University of California Press and the Milbank Memorial Fund Series on Health and the Public. The series began under the leadership of Dr. Dan Fox, then president of Milbank, and Lynne Withey, editor and, later, director of the University of California Press. It continued under the leadership of Carmen Hooker Odom, president of Milbank, and Hannah Love, associate editor for health at UC Press. What makes this series attractive to us is its unusually rigorous and fruitful review process. Initially, the press went through its traditional anonymous review procedure, and we are grateful to the external reviewers. We are particularly grateful for the second part of the review process, in which Milbank sent this manuscript to thirteen scholars, legislators, and lead experts; they provided written reviews, and most then spent a full day with us in New York City going over their comments in detail. All of us who participated in this session came out of it recognizing how special this process was. The participants were Heidi Bresnahan, director of publications at Milbank; Jonathan Cobb, editor; Daniel M. Fox, president emeritus of Milbank; Nicholas Freudenberg, distinguished professor, Hunter College School of Health Sciences, City University of New York (CUNY); Richard N. Gottfried, chair, Health Committee, New York State Assembly; Pete Grannis, first deputy comptroller, Office of the New York State Comptroller; Sheldon Krimsky, now Zicklin Professor, Brooklyn College, CUNY; Bruce P. Lanphear, professor of public health, Simon Fraser University; Susan E. Lederer, Robert Turell Professor of Medical History and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Jane Lin-Fu, now retired from the U.S. Children’s Bureau and the U.S. Public Health Service; John J. McConnell Jr., judge, U.S. District Court for the district of Rhode Island; Carmen Hooker Odom, president of Milbank; Samuel K. Roberts, associate professor of history, Columbia University; Charles K. Scott, chair, Labor Health and Social Services Committee, Wyoming Senate; Tara Strome, publications associate at Milbank; and Christian S. Warren, associate professor of history, Brooklyn College, CUNY. In addition, Ilene Abala, Kathleen Bachynski, Elisa Gonzalez, Alison Bateman-House, Marian Moser Jones, Sarah Vogel, and Laura Bothwell, at Columbia, and Faye Haun, at CUNY—our brilliant, enthusiastic, and always helpful past and present doctoral students—provided us needed help at many stages of this project.
Two colleagues who spent many years at Johns Hopkins University provided us with essential background information regarding the history of Johns Hopkins and its relationship to the surrounding community. Cynthia Connolly, now associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Constance Nathanson, now professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, have been wonderful resources and friends. Early on in our project we approached numerous faculty and administrators at Johns Hopkins itself and, in fact, had appointments with three senior professors who had been at the university for decades. We made clear that we understood they might not feel able to speak freely about the recent lawsuits and controversies surrounding the Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) study but that we were interested in more general information about the history of Johns Hopkins and its relationship to the broader community of Baltimore. We were surprised when each of our appointments was cancelled and we were directed to contact the administration of the schools of public health and medicine. We were advised by administrators to speak with the medical center’s head attorney, who kindly forwarded us an article she had written on the KKI controversy (whose first citation was to an article we wrote). However, two professors at Johns Hopkins’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, Ellen Silbergeld and Nancy Kass, were both helpful. J. Julian Chisolm and Mark Farfel, the two head researchers in the KKI study, could not be interviewed. Chisolm passed away long before we began this project, and Farfel, understandably, was reluctant to be interviewed.
Our colleagues at Columbia University, John Jay College, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York were always generous and supportive of our work. We presented various portions of this story during the long process of research and writing. At Columbia, we thank Ron Bayer, Betsy Blackmar, James Colgrove, Sally Conover, Matt Connelly, Tom D’Aunno, Yasmin Davis, Amy Fairchild, Eric Foner, Linda Fried, Tomás Guilarte, Barron Lerner, Mark Mazower, Lisa Metsch, Gerry Oppenheimer, Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, Pamela Smith, Toya Smith, and Ezra Susser. Samuel Roberts was especially generous with his vast knowledge of Baltimore’s history and of the racial and health politics of the city. Nitanya Nedd was always good natured and expert, particularly in addressing the worlds of Columbia and the National Science Foundation bureaucracies. At John Jay and the Graduate Center, we thank Priscilla Acuna, Andrea Balis, Michael Blitz, Jane Bowers, Steve Brier, Josh Brown, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Josh Freeman, Nick Freudenberg, Mary Gibson, Betsy Gitter, Amy Green, Carol Groneman, Richard Haw, Allison Kavey, Susan Klitzman, Sondra Leftoff, David Nasaw, Jordan Pascoe, Bertha Peralta, Shirley Sarna, Dennis Sherman, Abby Stein, and Jeremy Travis. We are especially grateful to Fritz Umbach for providing us with his knowledge of the history of housing. Sheila King of the Columbia Health Sciences Library cheerfully handled our numerous interlibrary loan requests. Also, the support of the National Library of Medicine was invaluable.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Milbank Memorial Fund have been generous supporters of our work. The NSF provided us with the time and resources to research
