The editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine has left his job in a dispute over plans by the journal's publisher to use the journal's name and logo to launch a range of other medical publications that would be only nominally controlled by the journal's top editor.

Dr Jerome Kassirer, the journal's editor in chief of eight years, agreed to step down because of his opposition to plans by the Massachusetts Medical Society, which publishes the medical journal, to launch a family of consumer oriented and specialty specific …