Howard Markel

Howard Markel (born April 23, 1960) is an American physician, author, editor, professor, and medical historian. Markel is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and Director of the University of Michigan's Center for the History of Medicine. He is also professor of Psychiatry, Health Management and Policy, History, and Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases. Markel writes extensively on major topics and figures in the history of medicine and public health, is a best-selling author, and is editor-in-chief of the health care policy journal The Milbank Quarterly.

Early life and education

Markel was born in Detroit and grew up in Oak Park and Southfield, Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree (summa cum laude) in English from the University of Michigan in 1982 and earned his M.D. degree (cum laude) from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1986, before completing his internship, residency, and fellowship in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1993. Markel then joined the University of Michigan faculty as a Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of the History of Medicine. A medical historian by training, Markel earned his Ph.D. in the History of Medicine, Science and Technology from Johns Hopkins in 1994.

Scholarship

Markel's writing focuses on major topics and figures in the history of medicine. A consistent theme in his work has been the historical relationship between epidemics, social stigma and immigration, and public health. His book Quarantine!: East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892, focuses on the complex interaction between anti-immigrant prejudices in the United States and the ways such prejudices were mobilized during the typhus and cholera outbreaks of 1892 in New York City. The resulting quarantines, enacted largely on the basis of class and ethnicity, prompted Congress to pass a National Quarantine Act codifying standards for medically investigating immigrants and foreign cargo. Markel's argument about the tension between isolating disease and the potential for social scapegoating acquired new urgency during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. "Ebola is jerking us back to the 19th century", he stated in The New York Times.

When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed expands the scope of Quarantine! by chronicling American epidemics during the two "great waves of immigration" that helped shape the 20th century. Markel argues that the association of immigrants with infectious disease is a key component of that history, and that their stigmatization during 20th century American epidemics "reveal[s] much about our predispositions for dealing with the perpetual threat of contagious disease". Health Affairs called When Germs Travel "a clarion call for the public (and the government) to recognize both the importance and the precariousness of the public health as we enter the twenty-first century".

As with Quarantine, Markel writes that When Germs Travel developed out of his work as an AIDS physician during the late 1980s and early 1990s:

Every Monday and Wednesday evening for three years, I saw dozens of patients, mostly young gay men and intravenous drug users, with HIV or AIDS. I became especially intrigued by a question that kept popping up during our conversations: 'Dr. Markel, do you think I will be quarantined because I have AIDS?' Doctors rarely hear the same question from so many different patients, but when they do they listen carefully.

Markel's most recent book, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine, explores the lives and careers of Freud and Halsted through their relationship to cocaine. Sherwin Nuland's front page New York Times book review described An Anatomy of Addiction as "a tour de force of scientific and social history, one that helps illuminate a unique period in the long story of medical discovery". Having treated patients suffering from various forms of substance abuse, Markel thought that sharing Freud and Halsted's struggles (both personal and scientific) with cocaine would raise awareness of the perniciousness of addiction while illuminating an important chapter in medical history. Discussing his work with Science Friday's Ira Flatow, Markel said "they were so compelling, and I thought using their lives and their struggles I could really put a human face on this terrible disease." PBS Newshour and C-SPAN also broadcast discussions of his work. A New York Times Best Seller, An Anatomy of Addiction was critically acclaimed in Nature, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, The New Yorker, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time, and The Baltimore Sun.

Markel has also contributed over 450 articles to scholarly publications and popular periodicals, from The New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health, and The Lancet to The New York Times, PBS Newshour's The Rundown, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, CNN, The New Republic, and the International Herald Tribune. He was a Contributing Writer to The Journal of the American Medical Association from 2007 to 2014. Markel was a regular guest on National Public Radio's Science Friday from 2010 to 2012, and frequently shares his knowledge of the history of medicine and public health on programs such as NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Here and Now, Tell Me More, American Public Media's Marketplace, The Leonard Lopate Show, ABC's Good Morning America and World News, NBC's Nightly News, Nova, Frontline, NewsHour, BBC's The World, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and History. The documentaries Rx for Survival (PBS), We Heard the Bells: The Influenza of 1918 (flu.gov), Forgotten Ellis Island (PBS), and PBS' Ken Burns and Siddhartha Mukherjee production of Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies all feature Markel's commentary and expertise.

In 2013 Markel became the editor-in-chief ofThe Milbank Quarterly, one of the leading peer-reviewed journals of population health and health policy in the world, which can be accessed at www.milbank.org.

Pandemic Preparedness Policy

Influenza

Markel advises U.S. agencies studying past and planning for potential future influenza pandemics. From 2005 to 2006, Markel served as a historical consultant on pandemic influenza preparedness planning for the United States Department of Defense. From 2006 to 2016 he served as principal historical consultant on pandemic preparedness for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Markel advised the federal government's response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic on the CDC Director's "Novel A/H1N1 Influenza Team B" real-time think tank. He and a team of researchers at the Center for the History of Medicine collaborated with the CDC to publish a digital encyclopedia of the 1918 influenza pandemic, of which he is editor-in-chief, the largest available digital collection of materials pertaining to the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century and one of the largest collections of historical documents ever assembled on a single epidemic. The collaboration between Markel and the CDC continued with analysis and documentation of non-pharmaceutical interventions deployed during the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.

Ebola

During the 2014 Ebola epidemic Markel contributed his expertise on the history of epidemics and quarantines to public forums such as NPR's All Things Considered, the BBC World Service, CNN/Sanjay Gupta MD, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker. He reminded readers in The New York Times that "we are a global village. Germs have always traveled. The problem now is they can travel with the speed of a jet plane." Markel additionally sought to enhance public understanding of the Ebola outbreak through op-eds for Reuters Opinion and The New Republic.

Honors and awards

Markel's historical, medical, and health policy research has been recognized with numerous grants, honors and awards. In 1996 he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar for his work on American Doctors and Foreign Patients; Health Care Delivery for Russian, Jewish, Mexican, and Chinese Immigrants to the United States between 1880 and 1995, while his work titled U.S. Immigration Policy and the Public Health, 1880-1995 received the National Institutes of Health's James A. Shannon Director’s Award for 1997-1999. He was named a Centennial Historian of the City of New York in 1998 for his role in advising and planning the New York City 100: Greater New York Centennial Celebration. Markel was also an inaugural fellow at the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers from 1999-2000.

In 2003 Markel's Quarantine!—by that time established as "a classic in the history of public health"—was recognized by the American Public Health Association with The Arthur J. Viseltear Prize "for the outstanding book in the History of Public Health in America". In 2007, he received the Theodore Woodward Award from the American Clinical and Climatological Association for his presentation on "Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions Employed By Major American Cities During the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic" and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy, also awarded on the basis of Markel's work on the 1918-1919 pandemic.

In 2008, in recognition of contributions made throughout his career to the fields of medicine and public health, Markel was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. In 2011 he was appointed to the Institute of Medicine's Board of Population Health and Public Health Practices and was Chair of its Section on Social Sciences from 2013-2015. In 2015, the Institute of Medicine was renamed the National Academy of Medicine, of which Dr. Markel is an elected member.

In 2015 Markel was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for demonstrating "exceptional capacity for productive scholarship.

In 2016, Markel was elected into the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars, in recognition of his career achievements and as a distinguished alumnus of that institution. That same year, the University of Michigan Medical School awarded Markel the Distinguished Alumnus Service Award, which honors alumni who exemplify the Michigan tradition of excellence and have brought credit to the University and their profession though their achievements and service to the welfare of mankind.

Selected bibliography

• The H.L. Mencken Baby Book, 1990
• The Portable Pediatrician, 1992; 2000
• The Practical Pediatrician: The A to Z Guide to Your Child's Health, Behavior, and Safety, 1996
• Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892, 1997; 1999
• When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed, 2004; 2005
• An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine, 2011; 2012