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Title: Townsend Martin Professor of History and Public Affairs
Area(s):
  • history and cultural politics of disease
  • health and health policy in U.S.
  • race ethnicity and health
  • cancer; genetics; vaccination; pain medicine
Office: 216 Dickinson Hall
Phone: 609-258-4960
Keith Wailoo A.

Keith Wailoo is jointly appointed in the Department of History and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His research examines a wide array of issues in public health, scientific and technological innovation in medical care, medical specialization, and the role of identity, gender, race and ethnicity in health and disease thought. His books include: How Cancer Crossed the Color Line (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2011); The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine: Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) which received the Association of American Publishers book award in History of Science; Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (University of North Carolina, 2001); and Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth Century America (Hopkins, 1997) which received the Arthur Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association. Dying in the City of the Blues received numerous awards: the Lillian Smith Book Award for Non-Fiction work elucidating questions of racial justice and inequality, the William H. Welch Medal for best book in the history of medicine, awarded by the American Association for the History of Medicine, the Susanne Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship, the American Political Science Association Award for Best Book published in the area of Public Policies, Social and Legal Dimensions of Ethnic and Racial Politics in the U.S., and the Community Service Award by the Sickle Cell/Thalassemia Patient Network. He is currently at work on a history of drugs, drug policies, and drug controversies, and completing a book on the history and politics of pain medicine in America.

Wailoo has organized and edited numerous studies aimed at drawing experts together from across the disciplinary spectrum to inform contemporary health and public policy. His edited books include: Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in America (Rutgers University Press, 2010), a study of the events in New Orleans and the nature of vulnerability, resilience, and recovery; Three Shots at Prevention: The HPV Vaccine and the Politics of Medicine's Simple Solutions (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), an examination of the cultural, scientific, and political turmoil surrounding the marketing, use, and mandating of Human Papillomavirus vaccines for girls--in the name of cervical cancer prevention; Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (Rutgers University Press, forthcoming) which examines the implications of new genetics for reshaping ideas about race and the past, as manifested in medicine, in the courts, and in the genealogy business; and A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, the Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship (UNC Press, 2006), an analysis of an infamous medical error leading to the death of an undocumented immigrant girl at Duke University Medical Center in 2003.

He has published articles in the British medical journal Lancet, in the Bulletin for the History of Medicine, in the Journal for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law.  In 2007, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine, one of the U.S. National Academies where he is also a member of the Health Sciences Policy Board.  He served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Increasing Rates of Organ Donation, contributing to its 2006 report, Organ Donation: Opportunities for Action. Over the years, his research has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund.

Wailoo has taught on the history of drugs and drug policy, genetics and society, and a wide range of other social and cultural issues in health care. Before joining the Princeton faculty, he taught in History and in Social Medicine (in the Medical School) at UNC Chapel Hill, and at Rutgers University (affiliated with History and with the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research) and where he was the founding director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity. Wailoo holds a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering from Yale University.
 
 

PUBLICATIONS

2011                How Cancer Crossed the Color Line (Jan 2011, Oxford University Press) 

2011                 Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (co-edited with Alondra Nelson, Catherine Lee, and Mia Bay; forthcoming, 2011)

2010                 The HPV Vaccine Controversies: Cancer, Sexual Risk, and Prevention at the Crossroads (co-edited with Steven Epstein, Robert Aronowitz, and Julie Livingston; Johns Hopkins University Press)

2010                 Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in America (co-edited with Roland Anglin and Karen O’Neill; Rutgers University Press, Rutgers Studies in Race and Ethnicity)

2006                The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine: Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease (co-authored with Stephen Pemberton) (Johns Hopkins University Press)  * 2006 Association of American Publishers Book Award in the History of Science, presented by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division

2006                A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, the Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship (co-edited with Julie Livingston and Peter Guarnaccia; University of North Carolina Press, Studies in Social Medicine series)
 
2004                Transforming American Medicine: Professional Sovereignty in a Changing Health Care System – Essays on Paul Starr’s Social Transformation of American Medicine (special double issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 29, Numbers 4-5, August-October 2004) co-edited with Mark Schlesinger and Timothy Jost. 
 
2001                Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001) Studies in Social Medicine

               * 2006 Sickle Cell/Thalassemia Patients Network, Community Service Award (book award)

               * 2005 William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine (books from previous 5 years considered)

               * 2002 Lillian Smith Book Award for Non-Fiction, Southern Regional Council

               * 2003 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship

                 * 2002 American Political Science Association, Book Award (Social and Legal Dimensions of Race and Ethnicity in the U.S., given by Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics)

                     * 2002 Honor Book, New Jersey Council for the Humanities
1997                Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Spring 1997) (paper, Spring 1999)
                         Henry E. Sigerist Series in the History of Medicine

                   * 1996 Arthur Viseltear Award, American Public Health Association
 

Articles and Book Chapters

2010                “Vaccination as Governance: HPV Skepticism in the United States and Africa, and the North-South Divide,” (with Julie Livingston and Barbara Cooper), in Wailoo, Livingston, Epstein, Aronowitz, eds., Three Shots at Prevention: The HPV Vaccine and the Politics of Medicine’s Simple Solutions (Johns Hopkins University Press)

2010                “A Slow, Toxic Decline: Dialysis Patients, Technological Failure, and the Unfulfilled Promise of Health in America,” in Wailoo, O’Neill, and Anglin, eds., Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in America (Rutgers University Press)

2010                 “Rebroadcasting Katrina: Blame, Vulnerability, and Post-2005 Disaster  Commentary,” (with Jeffrey Dowd) in Wailoo, O’Neill, and Anglin, eds., Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in America (Rutgers University Press)

2006                “The Politics of Second Chances: Waste, Futility, and the Debate Over Jesica Santillan’s Second Transplant,” in Keith Wailoo, Julie Livingston, and Peter Guarnaccia, eds., A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, the Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, October 2006)

2006                 “Stigma, Race, and Disease in Twentieth Century America,” Lancet 367:

                        February 11, 531-533) (Part of Essay Focus section on Stigma and Global Health)

2004                 “Sovereignty and Science: Revisiting the Role of Science in the Construction and Erosion of Medical Dominance,” in Schlesinger, Jost, Wailoo, eds., Transforming American Medicine (special double issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 29, Numbers 4-5, August-October 2004)

2003                “Inventing the Heterozygote: Molecular Biology, Racial Identity, and the Narratives of Sickle Cell Disease, Tay-Sachs, and Cystic Fibrosis,” in Donald Moore, ed., Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference (Duke University Press, 2003) ** Reprinted in Margaret Lock and Judith Farquhar, eds., Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life (Duke University Press, 2007)

2001                “The Power of Genetic Testing in a Conflicted Society,” in John Harley Warner and Janet Tighe, eds., Major Problems in the History of American Medicine and Public Health: Documents and Essays (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001): 379-387.

1998                “Genetic Research as Therapy: Implications of ‘Gene Therapy’ for Informed Consent,” Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 26 (Spring 1998: 38-47) (co-authored with Larry Churchill, Ph.D.; Myra Collins, M.D., Ph.D.; Nancy King, J.D.; and Stephen Pemberton, M.A.)

1998                “HIV Vaccine Efficacy Trials: Research and the Ethics of Knowledge-Production in ‘At Risk’ Communities,” in Nancy King and Gail Henderson, eds., From Regs to Relationships: Reexamining Research Ethics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998): 102-107.

1996                “Negro Blood as Genetic Marker: Thalassemia and Sickle Cell Anemia in America to 1950.” Journal of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 18 (1996): 305-320.

1991                “A Disease ‘sui generis’: The origins of sickle cell anemia and the emergence of modern clinical research, 1904-1924.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 65 (1991): 185-208.
 

Other Publications

2010                 “Can Reform Spell Relief?” The American Prospect, September 10, 2010 (contribution to special section on Fulfilling the Promise of Health Reform)

2007                “Essay: Old Story Updated; Better Living Through Pills,” New York Times (Science Times), November 13

2007                “The Consequential Case of Jesica Santillan,” The News and Observer (N.C.), Feb 25.

2001                 “The Body in Parts: Disease and the Biomedical Sciences in the Twentieth                          Century,” in Susan Fitzpatrick and John T. Bruer, eds., Carving Our Destiny: Scientific Research Faces a New Millennium (Essays by the James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellows) (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2001)

1990                 Oral History, Interviews with Five past presidents of the American Society of Hematology Including Helen Ranney; Clement Finch; Ernest Beutler; Samuel Rappaport. Columbia University Oral History Library New York, NY

1986-1988        Freelance science writer, American Scientist
                        (May 1988, March 1987, January 1986). Series of three biographical and scientific profiles of prominent junior scientists: Gary Brudvig, Chemistry, Yale University; Stephen Chu, Physics, Bell Labs and Stanford University; Paul Olsen, Geology, Columbia University. (** Stephen Chu interview republished in American Scientist, Jan-Feb 1998 after Stephen Chu was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics).

1985-1988        Freelance writer and editor, Case Reports: Highlights of Science and Technology in Connecticut (Publication of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering)
                       Articles on: U. S. Naval Underwater Systems Research; Lyme Disease Research at Yale and Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station; Anti-Hypertensive Pharmaceutical Development at Pfizer; Marine Ecology using Satellite Imaging at University of Connecticut.

1985-1987        Articles, profiles, and promotional materials for Yale Alumni Magazine, CT Business Journal, John B. Pierce Foundation (environmental research), and Yale University.