Mary Mallon, commonly known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish-born American cook who is believed to have infected between 51 and 122 people with typhoid fever. The infections caused three confirmed deaths, with unconfirmed estimates of as many as 50. She was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogenic bacteria Salmonella typhi. She was forcibly quarantined twice by authorities, the second time for the remainder of her life because she persisted in working as a cook and thereby exposed others to the disease. Mallon died after a total of nearly 30 years quarantined. Her popular nickname has since become a term for persons who spread disease or other misfortune.
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.
Michael Laban Walzer is an American political theorist and public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, he is editor emeritus of the left-wing magazine Dissent, with which he has been affiliated with since his years as an undergraduate at Brandeis University, an advisory editor of the Jewish journal Fathom, and sits on the editorial board of the Jewish Review of Books.
Van Rensselaer Potter II was an American biochemist, oncologist, and bioethicist. Born in northeast South Dakota, Potter was professor of oncology at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for more than five decades.
The Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) is a private medical school, pharmacy school, and graduate school of sciences in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The school was established in 1893 and is the largest research center in eastern Wisconsin. It is associated with Froedtert Hospital as well as Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and houses the Center for Infectious Disease Research There are two additional campuses, one in Green Bay and one in Wausau.
George J. Annas is the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, School of Medicine, and School of Law.
Ruth R. Faden is an American scientist, academic, and founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. She was the Berman Institute's Director from 1995 until 2016, and the inaugural Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director from 2014 to 2016. Faden is the inaugural Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics.
Sara Josephine Baker was an American physician notable for making contributions to public health, especially in the immigrant communities of New York City. Her fight against the damage that widespread urban poverty and ignorance caused to children, especially newborns, is perhaps her most lasting legacy. In 1917, she noted that babies born in the United States faced a higher mortality rate than soldiers fighting in World War I, drawing a great deal of attention to her cause. She also is known for (twice) tracking down Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary.
Lewis A. Leavitt is medical director of the Waisman Center on Human Development at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine. Leavitt graduated from the University of Chicago School of Medicine and is the husband of medical historian Judith Walzer Leavitt.
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH) is a professional school for the study of medicine and public health at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It is one of only two medical schools in Wisconsin, along with the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and the only public one.
Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez is an American historian, and professor at University of Michigan.
Guenter B. Risse is an American medical historian. He has written numerous books, including his most recent "Driven by Fear: Epidemics and Isolation in San Francisco's House of Pestilence." The American Association for the History of Medicine awarded him the 1988 William H. Welch Medal for his book Hospital Life in Enlightenment Scotland and its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He is Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, at the University of California, San Francisco, and currently Affiliate Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Elda Emma Anderson was an American physicist and health researcher. During World War II, she worked on the Manhattan Project at Princeton University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she prepared the first sample of pure uranium-235 at the laboratory. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, she became professor of physics at Milwaukee-Downer College in 1929. After the war, she became interested in health physics. She worked in the Health Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and established the professional certification agency known as the American Board of Health Physics.
Judith Andre is a philosophy professor (retired) and virtue theorist. She earned her Ph.D. at Michigan State University in 1979 and has taught courses on ethical issues in global public health, ethics and development, animal welfare, and virtue theory at Old Dominion University and Michigan State University before retiring.
The history of medicine in the United States encompasses a variety of approaches to health care in the United States spanning from colonial days to the present. These interpretations of medicine vary from early folk remedies that fell under various different medical systems to the increasingly standardized and professional managed care of modern biomedicine.
Ruth Harriet Bleier was an American neurophysiologist who is also one of the first feminist scholars to explore how gender biases have shaped biology. Her career consisted of combining her academic interests with her commitment to social justice for women and the lower-class.
Bertha Van Hoosen was an American surgeon devoted to women's health issues and the advancement of fellow women surgeons. Among other notable achievements, Van Hoosen was the first president and a founder of the American Medical Women's Association in 1915 and the first woman to be head of a medical division at a coeducational university. She published an autobiography detailing her personal experiences in medicine, Petticoat Surgeon.
Susan E. Lederer is an American historian of science. She is the Robert Turell Professor of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Lederer focuses on medicine and American society in the 20th-century. This includes the areas of race, medicine, public health, popular culture, research ethics, and the history of medical ethics. Lederer completed a B.A. in the history of science at Johns Hopkins University in 1977. She completed an M.A. (1979) and Ph.D. (1987) in the history of science at University of Wisconsin–Madison. Lederer's dissertation was titled Human experimentation and antivivisection in turn-of-the-century America. Her advisor was Ronald Numbers.
Leah Miriam Lowenstein was an American nephrologist, academic administrator, and cellist. In 1982, she became the first woman dean of a co-educational, medical school in the United States upon her appointment at Jefferson Medical College. Lowenstein was previously associate dean and professor of medicine and biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. She served in the Carter administration as a medical advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health. Lowenstein was an advocate for women in medicine.
Jasmine Y. Zapata is an American physician and epidemiologist. She is the chief medical officer and state epidemiologist for community health at Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Her career includes work as a pediatrician, public health researcher, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, author, and her support for youth empowerment with a variety of initiatives.
