Industry News - March 1999

JAMA Editor's Firing Controversial

CHICAGO—Bad timing was the official reason George Lundberg, M.D., 17-year editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), was fired Jan. 15, but his publishing history may have had more to do with it. Under his direction JAMA has published a variety of controversial articles—including a recent series on alternative medicine—that some say led to the firing.

Lundberg was publicly accused of expediting the publication of an eight-year-old survey of college students' definitions of "sexual relations" to coincide with Congressional impeachment proceedings. According to The New York Times, the American Medical Association's (AMA's) Ratcliffe Anderson, M.D., said he fired Lundberg after the timing of the sex report caused a "firestorm of protest" from the medical community.

But many believe that the report, written by Stephanie Sanders and June Reinisch of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University in Bloomington, could not have been enough to end Lundberg's respected career at JAMA. "I can't imagine that an editor would be fired for one article, so there's more to this than meets the eye," said Jerome Kassirer, M.D., editor of the competing New England Journal of Medicine in an interview with Newsday.

Anderson's action has sparked anger from many in the academic and medical communities, including some on the board of the AMA. Jack D. Barchas, M.D., of the Ithaca, NY-based Cornell University Medical College and AMA board member, told The New York Times that he and other board members called Anderson, "begging him to reconsider." He said, "Many of us feel anger, outrage and a sense of betrayal by the decision."