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Controversy over new editor at New England Journal of Medicine

Scott Gottlieb , New York

The Massachusetts Medical Society has named a Boston pulmonary specialist as the new editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, opening a new chapter in a struggle over the journal's control that began more than a year ago with the departure of the journal's long standing editor Dr Jerome Kassirer.

Dr Jeffrey Drazen, aged 53, who carries out research into asthma at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is expected to take the helm of the medical journal this summer. Dr Drazen has led the pulmonary division at Brigham and Women's Hospital since 1989 and has had 200 original research articles and 100 review articles published in medical journals since 1972.

Dr Kassirer, the journal's editor in chief for eight years, was asked to step down last May because of his opposition to plans by the Massachusetts Medical Society, which publishes the journal, to launch a family of consumer oriented and specialty specific medical journals.

Dr Kassirer had already roused the medical society's ire by resisting earlier attempts to use the journal's name to sell its newer publications, including two consumer newsletters, as well as several publications written for doctors.

Dr Marcia Angell, the journal's executive editorwho succeeded Dr Kassirer as interim editor in chief and was a finalist for the permanent postwithdrew recently as a candidate and said that she was retiring to write a book on alternative medicine.

Dr Drazen is stepping into the job at a time when many issues about the journal's future remain unresolved. The most prominent is how much control the next editor will maintain over the journal's content, editorial policy, and brand namean issue that led to the departure of Dr Kassirer. Dr Angell took the job only after the Massachusetts Medical Society agreed last year to give her total authority over the content, name, and logo of the journal in print and in its electronic version.

One of the first issues Dr Drazen has confronted is controversy over his close ties with a number of pharmaceutical companies that have funded his pulmonary research and hired him as a consultant. Under the New England Journal of Medicine's conflict of interest rules, he is barred from writing editorials or review articles relating to his research or related work within two years of accepting commercial funding.

The controversy over editorial independence at the journal partly surrounded the Massachusetts Medical Society's efforts to advertise its other publications for doctors and the public by saying that the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine produce them.

(Credit: AP PHOTO/JULIA MALAKIE ) Dr Drazen opens a new chapter in NEJM"s history