Background
Rothman, David J. was born on April 30, 1937 in New York City. Son of Murray and Anne (Beier) Rothman.
( Conscience and Convenience was quickly recognized for i...)
Conscience and Convenience was quickly recognized for its masterly depiction and interpretation of a major period of reform history. This history begins in a social context in which treatment and rehabilitation were emerging as predominant after America's prisons and asylums had been broadly acknowledged to be little more than embarrassing failures. The resulting progressive agenda was evident: to develop new, more humane and effective strategies for the criminal, delinquent, and mentally ill. The results, as Rothman documents, did not turn out as reformers had planned. For adult criminal offenders, such individual treatment could be accomplished only through the provision of broad discretionary authority, whereby choices could be made between probation, parole, indeterminate sentencing, and, as a measure of last resort, incarceration in totally redesigned prisons. For delinquents, the juvenile court served as a surrogate parent and accelerated and intensified individual treatment by providing for a series of community-based individual and family services, with the newly designed, school-like reformatories being used for only the most intractable cases. For the mentally ill, psychiatrists chose between outpatient treatments, short-term intensive care, or as last resort, long-term care in mental hospitals with new cottage and family-like arrangements. Rothman shows the consequences of these reforms as unmitigated disasters. Despite benevolent intentions, the actual outcome of reform efforts was to take the earlier failures of prisons and asylums to new, more ominous heights. In this updated edition, Rothman chronicles and examines incarceration of the criminal, the deviant, and the dependent in U.S. society, with a focus on how and why these methods have persisted and expanded for over a century and a half despite longstanding evidence of their failures and abuses.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/020230714X/?tag=2022091-20
(Addresses the issues at the heart of international medici...)
Addresses the issues at the heart of international medicine and social responsibility. During the last half-century many international declarations have proclaimed health care to be a fundamental human right. But high aspirations repeatedly confront harsh realities, in societies both rich and poor. To illustrate this disparity, David and Sheila Rothman bring together stories from their investigations around the world into medical abuses. A central theme runs through their account: how the principles of human rights, including bodily integrity, informed consent, and freedom from coercion, should guide physicians and governments in dealing with patients and health care. Over the past two decades, the Rothmans have visited post-Ceausescu Romania, where they uncovered the primitive medical practices that together with state oppression caused hundreds of orphans to develop AIDS. They have monitored the exploitative international traffic in organs in India, China, Singapore, and the Philippines. One of the most controversial questions they explore is experimentation on human beings, whether in studies of the effects of radioactive iron on pregnant women in 1940s Tennessee or in contemporary trials of AIDS drugs in the third world. And they examine a number of rulings by South Africa’s Constitutional Court that have suggested practical ways of reconciling the right to health care with its society’s limited resources. Whether discussing the training of young doctors in the US, the effects of segregation on medicine in Zimbabwe, or proposals for rationing health care, David and Sheila Rothman conclude that an ethical and professional concern for observing medicine’s oldest commandment—do no harm—must be joined with a profound commitment to protecting human rights.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590171403/?tag=2022091-20
(What does it mean to live in a time when medical science ...)
What does it mean to live in a time when medical science can not only cure the human body but also reshape it? How should we as individuals and as a society respond to new drugs and genetic technologies? Sheila and David Rothman address these questions with a singular blend of history and analysis, taking us behind the scenes to explain how scientific research, medical practice, drug company policies, and a quest for peak performance combine to exaggerate potential benefits and minimize risks. They present a fascinating and factual story from the rise of estrogen and testosterone use in the 1920s and 1930s to the frenzy around liposuction and growth hormone to the latest research into the genetics of aging. The Rothmans reveal what happens when physicians view patients’ unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their bodies—short stature, thunder thighs, aging—as though they were diseases to be treated. The Pursuit of Perfection takes us from the early days of endocrinology (the belief that you are your hormones) to today’s frontier of genetic enhancements (the idea that you are your genes). It lays bare the always complicated and sometimes compromised positions of science, medicine, and commerce. This is the book to read before signing on for the latest medical fix.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679439803/?tag=2022091-20
( This is a masterful effort to recognize and place the p...)
This is a masterful effort to recognize and place the prison and asylums in their social contexts. Rothman shows that the complexity of their history can be unraveled and usefully interpreted. By identifying the salient influences that converged in the tumultuous 1820s and 1830s that led to a particular ideology in the development of prisons and asylums, Rothman provides a compelling argument that is historically informed and socially instructive. He weaves a comprehensive story that sets forth and portrays a series of interrelated events, influences, and circumstances that are shown to be connected to the development of prisons and asylums. Rothman demonstrates that meaningful historical interpretation must be based upon not one but a series of historical events and circumstances, their connections and ultimate consequences. Thus, the history of prisons and asylums in the youthful United States is revealed to be complex but not so complex that it cannot be disentangled, described, understood, and applied. This reissue of a classic study addresses a core concern of social historians and criminal justice professionals: Why in the early nineteenth century did a single generation of Americans resort for the first time to institutional care for its convicts, mentally ill, juvenile delinquents, orphans, and adult poor? Rothman's compelling analysis links this phenomenon to a desperate effort by democratic society to instill a new social order as it perceived the loosening of family, church, and community bonds. As debate persists on the wisdom and effectiveness of these inherited solutions, The Discovery of the Asylum offers a fascinating reflection on our past as well as a source of inspiration for a new century of students and professionals in criminal justice, corrections, social history, and law enforcement.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0202307158/?tag=2022091-20
( What caused physicians in the USA to confront committee...)
What caused physicians in the USA to confront committees, forms, and active patients? Tracing the revolution that transformed the doctor-patient relationship, this book takes the reader into the laboratory and the examining room, tracing the development of new technologies and social attitudes.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465082106/?tag=2022091-20
( The Willowbrook Wars is a dramatic and illuminating acc...)
The Willowbrook Wars is a dramatic and illuminating account of the effort to close down a scandal-ridden institution and return its 5,400 handicapped residents to communities in New York. The wars began in 1972 with Geraldo Rivera's televised raid on the Willowbrook State School. They continued for three years in a federal courtroom, with civil libertarian lawyers persuading a conservative and conscience-stricken judge to expand the rights of the disabled, and they culminated in a 1975 consent decree, with the state of New York pledging to accomplish the unprecedented assignment in six years. From 1975 to 1982, David and Sheila Rothman observed this remarkable chapter in American reform of mental disabilities care. Would the state live up to its agreement without "dumping" residents into other nightmarish institutions? Would the lawyers prove as interested in meeting client needs as in securing client rights? Could a tradition-bound bureaucracy create a new network of community services? And finally, would a governor and a legislature tolerate such outside intervention, and if so, for how long? In answering these questions, The Willowbrook Wars takes us behind the scenes to clarify the role of the judiciary, the fate of the underprivileged, and the potential for social justice. In their new afterword, the authors bring the story up to date, describing the results of the closing of the institution in 1987 from the experiences of integrating the former residents into communities to the legal battles between the state of New York and advocates for the mentally handicapped.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0202307573/?tag=2022091-20
Rothman, David J. was born on April 30, 1937 in New York City. Son of Murray and Anne (Beier) Rothman.
Bachelor, Columbia University, 1958; Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1959; Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1964.
Assistant professor of history, Columbia University, New York City, 1964-1967;
associate professor, Columbia University, 1967-1971;
professor, Columbia University, since 1971;
Bernard Schoenberg professor social medicine, Columbia University
director Center for Study of Society and Medicine, Columbia University. Fulbright-Hayes professor Hebrew U., Jerusalem, 1968-1969, India, 1982. Visiting Pinkerton Professor School Criminal Justice, State University New York, at Albany, 1973-1974.
Samuel Paley lecturer Hebrew U., Jerusalem, 1977. Member Committee for Study of Incarceration, 1971-1974. Co-director Project on Community Alternatives, 1978-1982.
Chairman advisory board on criminal justice Clark Foundation, 1978-1982. Member board advisors The Project on Death in American, Open Society Institute, since 1995, trustee. Member board of trustees Open Society Institute, since 1996.
(What does it mean to live in a time when medical science ...)
( What caused physicians in the USA to confront committee...)
(Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternativ...)
( The Willowbrook Wars is a dramatic and illuminating acc...)
( Conscience and Convenience was quickly recognized for i...)
( This is a masterful effort to recognize and place the p...)
(Addresses the issues at the heart of international medici...)
(David Rothman gives us a brilliant, finely etched study o...)
(Revised)
(2)
Member American History Association, New York Academy of Medicine, Phi Beta Kappa.
Married Sheila Miller, June 26, 1960. Children: Matthew, Micol.