Allan Brandt
Allan M. Brandt is the Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine and Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He holds a joint appointment with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School. Brandt served as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 2008 to 2012. His work focuses on social and ethical aspects of health, disease, medical practices, and global health in the twentieth century. Brandt is the author of No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880 (1987); and is co-editor of Morality and Health (1997). He has written on the social history of epidemic disease; the history of public health and health policy; and the history of human experimentation among other topics. His book on the social and cultural history of cigarette smoking in the U.S., The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America, remains up to this day an authority on the history of cigarettes and the tobacco industry in the US. The book received the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University in 2008 and the Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine in 2011. The link to the website of the book is cited above.
Brandt has testified only in one case: The landmark case US v. Philip Morris et al., on behalf of the Department of Justice. Brandt’s testimony was central to the DOJ’s argumentation that the tobacco industry had lied and conspired against the American Public for decades. The final verdict by Judge Kessler drew heavily from Brandt’s testimony. His experiences before and during the trail are also depicted in The Cigarette Century.