[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 22, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4234-S4236]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REMEMBERING DAVID ROSNER
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I won't speak long. David Rosner has
died. You have probably never heard of him, but I knew him. His
research, along with his colleague Gerry Markowitz, helped expose the
role of the lead paint industry in poisoning millions of children.
He was a great public health researcher. Here is his book with Gerry
Markowitz, which I just took down from my Senate bookshelf, where I
keep it: ``Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial
Pollution.''
David had smarts, and he had discipline, and he had guts. The smarts
made him and Gerry path-breaking researchers. The discipline made their
research incontrovertible, and the guts helped him weather the
response, all too common, from American industry when faced with
inconvenient truths: to lie, to bully, to disparage.
Well, that behavior did not defeat David. His work stands.
As I said, I won't speak long. I will instead ask unanimous consent
that three obituaries be printed in the Congressional Record appended
to these remarks. One is his obituary in The Lancet, the distinguished
medical publication. The second is a reminiscence by his professional
peer Bruce Lanphear. And the last is a Substack reminiscence by his
daughter Molly.
David was a special man. He did special work. I was proud to have
worked with him.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Obituary--David Rosner
(By Andrew Green)
Pioneering public health historian. Born on March 13, 1047,
in New York, NY, USA, he died on May 24, 2026, in New York,
aged 79 years.
As a leading historian of public health, David Rosner
pursued ``the highest level of scholarship that he then put
to work for the benefit of people who had suffered illness
and death at the hands of industry'', said Amy Fairchild,
Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at
the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN. Rosner helped
develop and expand the field of occupational and
environmental history, showing how disease and death were
often foreseeable--and avoidable--by-products of
industrialisation. ``What he really wanted to accomplish in
labour history was to bring attention to health and the
effects of working conditions on worker's health'', said
Gerald Markowitz, Distinguished Professor at the John Jay
College of Criminal Justice in New York, NY, and Rosner's
long-time collaborator. ``He also really wanted to show how
the workplace and the environment are crucial elements in
improving public health.''
Rosner received a bachelor's degree from City College of
New York, NY, in 1968 and a master's degree in public health
4 years later from the University of Massachusetts in
Amherst, MA. In that period, Rosner also worked at a hospital
for developmentally challenged children in New York. ``That's
really where he began to see the relationship between
environmental factors and disease, because many of the
children had been lead poisoned'', Markowitz said. ``That
really was an important education for him about how life
chances are completely altered because of housing conditions
or diets or just poverty.'' Rosner completed a doctorate in
the history of science at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA
in 1978. 4 years later, he published his first book, A Once
Charitable Enterprise, documenting how hospitals in New York
had transitioned from community-based institutions to
bureaucratised facilities. ``That was really a pathbreaking
work that got a lot of attention'', Markowitz said. At City
University Distinguished Professor, Rosner initiated and
academic career ``teaching public health students to think
not only about public health policy and practice and
epidemiology, but to think about history'', Fairchild said.
``You have to know something about what came before you. It
shapes our assumptions and sense of what's possible.''
In 1998, Rosner moved to Columbia University in New York,
where he was named the Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of
Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of History. He also co-
founded and co-directed the Center for the History and Ethics
of Public Health, which was jointly hosted by Columbia's
Mailman School of Public Health. ``He was great to younger
scholars and just very supportive of younger people coming
into the field'', said Susan Reverby, Marion Butler McLean
Professor Emerita in the History of Ideas and Professor
Emerita of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College,
in Wellesley, MA.
Rosner challenged the health and environmental harms caused
by industry both through his scholarship and in legal
settings. He would regularly testify as an expert witness on
behalf of people affected by workplace and environmental
hazards, including silica dust, asbestos, and lead poisoning.
``He spent all this time testifying for workers and much of
that money he ploughed back into Columbia to build the
history of the public health programme'', Reverby said.
``More than the content of his work on environmental and
occupational exposures, he really modelled what it means to
be an intellectual who contributes to our world'', said Mary
Bassett, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights
at the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health in Boston,
MA.
With Markowitz, Rosner would write of edit several books,
including Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of
Occupational Disease in Twentieth Century America (1991),
Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial
Pollution (2002), and Building the Worlds That Kill Us:
Disease, Death, and Inequality in American History (2024).
[[Page S4235]]
Rosner, who retired from Columbia University as a Professor
Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences in 2025, received a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987 and was named the recipient of
the 2026 Genevieve Miller Lifetime Achievement Award from the
American Association for the History of Medicine. He is
survived by his wife, Kathlyn Conway, a psychotherapist, and
their children, Zachary and Molly. ``Disease is not only a
matter of bacteria and viruses, but it is produced by the
social and political conditions that society makes'',
Markowitz said; Rosner ``very much believed that and that is
what he wanted his legacy to be, to make that known in the
public health world and the broader society''.
[May 25, 2026]
How Rosner and Markowitz Revealed the Hidden Architecture of Disease
(By Bruce Lanphear)
David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz did not simply write
history. Together, they changed how many of us understand the
relationship between industry, disease, science, and public
health. Their work became so intertwined that it is difficult
to think of one without the other. Yet David's death this
past week invites reflection not only on their partnership,
but on the singular role he played in reshaping public health
history.
I had the opportunity and privilege to work with David and
Jerry--they were a package deal--in the Rhode Island and
California public nuisance cases against the paint and
pigment manufacturers. Watching them work was to see
historians operating not as distant chroniclers of the past,
but as investigators reconstructing how societies normalize
harm. They brought archives to life. Internal memos, trade
association minutes, and forgotten correspondence became
evidence not only of what industries knew, but of how
uncertainty itself was cultivated and deployed. More broadly,
Rosner and Markowitz helped redefine what public health
history could be. Rosner and Markowitz stood at the
intersection of history and public health. They understood
that disease does not emerge in a vacuum. It arises from the
worlds we build--our industries, our housing, our labor
systems, our politics, and our willingness to accept certain
harms as the price of progress.
Their work on lead poisoning fundamentally reshaped the
public conversation. Lead was long portrayed as an
unfortunate but isolated problem affecting poor children in
deteriorating housing. Rosner and Markowitz showed something
much larger and more unsettling: lead poisoning was not an
accident. It was the foreseeable consequence of industrial
decisions, aggressive marketing, political compromise, and
delayed regulation. Their landmark work, Deceit and Denial,
documented how industries understood the dangers of lead long
before the public did and how scientific uncertainty was
often amplified to delay action.
The same themes ran through their work on silica and vinyl
chloride. They chronicled how workers developed silicosis,
cancer, and other occupational diseases while industries
debated standards, questioned evidence, and insisted more
study was needed. They showed that uncertainty was not merely
a scientific condition; it was a political strategy.
Rosner and Markowitz read corporate archives the way
epidemiologists read outbreaks: searching for patterns,
timelines, concealment, and consequence. They reconstructed
not only what companies knew, but when they knew it and how
they responded. In doing so, they helped expose a recurring
pattern in public health: the long gap between recognition of
harm and willingness to act. Their work did not remain
confined to universities or academic journals. It entered
courtroorns, regulatory debates, and public policy battles,
where it was often intensely contested precisely because it
challenged powerful industries and long-standing assumptions
about responsibility for disease.
They also understood something profound about modern
disease. Many of the illnesses surrounding us are not sudden
catastrophes. They accumulate slowly across decades, hidden
within the ordinary routines of industrial life. Lead in
paint and gasoline. Silica in mines and factories. Vinyl
chloride in plastics manufacturing. These were not exotic
hazards. They were woven into modernity itself.
That insight feels even more relevant today. We
increasingly inhabit a world saturated with synthetic
chemicals, pollutants, and technologies introduced long
before their long-term effects are fully understood. Rosner
and Markowitz's workforced us to confront an uncomfortable
possibility: we are, in part, dying from the world we built.
Yet David was never merely cynical. His work carried a
moral seriousness without drifting into selfrighteousness. He
believed history mattered because it illuminated choices--
choices made differently in the future if we were willing to
learn from the past.
Many scholars write about public health. David Rosner
helped reveal its deeper architecture: the political
decisions, economic incentives, institutional hesitations,
and cultural assumptions that shape who becomes sick and who
is protected.
That is an extraordinary legacy.
____
[June 16, 2026]
Losing My Dad While the Knicks Win
(By Molly Rosner)
As Knicks fever took over NYC the last few weeks, I've been
excavating more memories of my dad and the Knicks, more
lessons that 1990s fandom taught me. So I wrote a fuller
piece about it. And here it is:
My dad, a lifelong New Yorker and dedicated Knicks fan,
died on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, May 24th. One day
later, the Knicks won their first Eastern Conference
championship since 1999. Making sense of the cruelty of that
timing isn't easy.
One tough reality about mourning is that the rest of life
keeps happening while you do it. Grief settles into you while
you go about your daily routine pretending a piece of
yourself isn't broken, missing. The Knicks kept playing,
magnificently, even though my dad wasn't there to answer the
phone after the game.
My childhood in the 1990s was the last heyday for Knicks
basketball and I have a lot of memories mixed up with the
events of Madison Square Garden. As an awkwardly tall pre-
teen, I found comfort in fancying myself as Patrick Ewing on
my basketball team. When Allan Houston played with a Band-Aid
on his head because he'd bumped it in the night while feeding
his baby, I thought there was nothing more noble or sweet. In
that moment, I saw that being a fan was about more than
athletic ability: Everyone loved Michael Jordan, but I could
see the qualities that made my own dad so wonderful in Allan
Houston. When I wore my Latrell Sprewell jersey to class, my
middle school science teacher asked me--a rule follower to
the core--if I supported his assault on his coach (before he
came to the Knicks). I grappled with adoring someone who
broke rules. I idolized the players my dad idolized.
It was while my mom was undergoing chemo for breast cancer,
that my dad and uncle got season tickets as a relief valve.
Because of those tickets, my dad was there cheering in the
crowd when my brother and I played the national anthem with
the East Harlem Violin Program before a Knicks game. We
practiced while the Knicks warmed up and, for the length of
the song, the Knicks watched and applauded for us--a group of
local public-school kids--as we played on their court. When
the electronics store Nobody Beats The Wiz, sponsored the
Knicks, we played the free giveaway cassette tape with
jingles about The Wiz and raps about--and performed by--the
Knicks over and over again. ``I'm a Knicks fan , I'm a
Knicks fan / I'm down with the orange and the blue!''
My dad was always unabashedly proud and supportive of me,
so I can pinpoint the one time I knew I'd disappointed him. I
was approached at the Garden during a game and asked if I
wanted to shoot free throws during half time. As a teenage
girl who'd watched so many other fans miss in front of
thousands of people, I was too scared and I declined. When I
got back to the seats from the concession stand and confessed
to him, I remember his astonishment, ``My own daughter turned
down a chance to play at Madison Square Garden?'' So certain
am I in his love for me, that this ``failure'' became a
running joke that would pop up at various life milestones.
My dad had that chance himself, playing for his high school
team on that hallowed court in Madison Square Garden in 1964.
Though he was a renowned scholar, one of his prized
possessions was the photo of him mid-air, arms stretched high
for a jump ball, converse sneakers dangling above the floor
during that game.
As he got older, my dad's appreciation for the team turned
into one of awe for their athleticism. He'd repeat comments
throughout the game--look how strong they are, look how high
they can jump. ``Just incredible,'' he'd mutter to no one in
particular.
This year on Mother's Day, when I called him during game 3
of the second round to tell him our car had broken down on
the highway about an hour south of Philly, he'd comforted me
first with the Knicks score and then noted that train tickets
home might be expensive because of all the Knicks fans coming
home that evening. He offered to come get me instead.
Two days later, he went into the ICU.
The final round of the Eastern Conference began--Knicks vs.
Cavs. After he stopped responding to our voices in the
hospital, my brother and I would put the Knicks game on in
the room, both holding on to the hope that the sound of
sneakers squeaking on the court, or the announcers calling
the plays, or the chants of ``de-fence'' would get through to
him--that those familiar sounds might just be powerful enough
to wake him up.
We'd stay until halftime, when visiting hours ended,
watching, hoping. I walked the mile and a half home from the
hospital checking the score on my phone, eavesdropping on
conversations and shouts from inside bars where the game was
playing, unsure of how to navigate all the emotions I was
feeling: Devastation at my dad's condition; joy at the Knicks
glory punctuated by pain that I couldn't share this with him;
certainty that he'd want me to enjoy this; heartbreak that I
wouldn't receive a ``Yeah!'' text at the end of the game. As
I walked through Harlem, I stopped next to a group of four
men on folding chairs who'd set up a projector to watch the
game. I checked the score and complimented their set up.
Being conversant in Knicks meant we could talk to each other
with a certain level of familiarity. ``Let's Go Knicks,'' I
said in lieu of, ``have a good night.'' As I continued home,
I felt grateful that the whole city, it seemed, was rooting
for their hometown team--our team.
[[Page S4236]]
The next morning, the ICU nurse caring for my dad, who is
not a basketball fan, told us that she'd checked the score on
her way to work just so that she could tell him the good
news. For us, that was a real act of care. His fandom was a
part of his identity as a New Yorker. The Knicks gave us
something hopeful to talk about even as we felt increasingly
alarmed that he wasn't responding to that news, or anything
else.
And then, there they were, our childhood heroes: Patrick
Ewing, John Starks, Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell, Larry
Johnson, and all our favorite players, thirty years older,
showing up to support this team that was, for the most part,
not born when the Knicks last saw a division championship. It
felt like they were coming together specially for my family.
The whole city has awakened in a way only New Yorkers can--
with innovative watching parties, public joy, orange and blue
bagels, and signature snark that makes the city into a home.
My dad bestowed on my brother and me the gift of being part
of the crowd. He taught us what it means to cheer through
thick and thin, what it means to maintain hope, and that
there is power in believing in something ``just for fun.'' I
share the bond of fandom with friends who send me texts
throughout every game even if we haven't spoken all year, and
I thank my dad for bringing me into this community.
The day he died, we told my dad that the Knicks were one
game away from the Eastern Conference title that he'd waited
27 years to see. We told him that they looked like they were
going to sweep. We told him the Knicks were honoring him at
MSG. We told him the wait was over, we told him we loved him.
You can't time grief. I know that writing this is an
attempt to make sense of something that defies logic. I
wondered if a Knicks win would exacerbate my grief, as many
things seem to right now. I'd cried big slobbery tears when
they won the East. But the road through the finals was filled
with moments of pure joy and camaraderie, the drama of an
historic comeback, and a team so likeable you can't help but
smile. It has felt like a balm on this open wound. I think
it's healing decades of strife for fans with people who
didn't live to see this victory. Karl-Anthony Towns said
after winning the championship that he felt like his mom, who
many fans know died in 2020, helped pull some strings for
this win. ``Thank you, mama. I appreciate you getting me
one,'' he said. Every lifelong Knicks fan has someone like my
dad who didn't get to see this championship, but believes
they might have helped pull some strings, too.
I know my dad would not want our grief compounded by a
Knicks loss. Being a Knicks fan in the `90s was an exercise
in resilience. It taught us not to take anything for granted
and I draw on those lessons today.
Now, even without my dad, my family cheers because being a
fan in New York is a legacy we are tasked with carrying on. A
chance to be part of something bigger than us. Something to
cheer for through pain.
Go New York, Go New York, Go.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
____________________