JAMA editor fired over sex article

By Irene Hsiao
Arizona Daily Wildcat
January 22, 1999

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Associated Press
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Dr. George D. Lundberg, editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association for the last 17 years, looks out a lobby window where he lives in Chicago, last Friday. Lundberg was fired by the American Medical Association because he published a research article about Americans' sexual attitudes, coinciding with President Clinton's impeachment trial.

The long-time editor of the Journal of the American Medicine Association lost his job last week for printing college students' opinions on sex, a move one UA professor called poor timing.

Richard Cortner, a UA political science professor, said the article's appearance during President Clinton's sex-ridden impeachment trial was uncalled for, but doubted it would influence the outcome of the trial.

"I doubt it has any effect on the trial itself," he said. "I think the timing is awkward, the AMA (American Medical Association) does not want to appear to take sides."

Dr. George D. Lundberg, 17-year editor of JAMA, was fired last week for publishing an article on college students' definitions of sex Jan. 20.

Cortner said that the firing was unnecessary, adding that it "seemed awfully drastic."

The article states that 60 percent of college students in a 1991 survey did not believe oral sex was equivalent to having sex. Almost 100 percent of the survey participants determined penile-vaginal intercourse as engaging in sex.

According to JAMA, the survey conducted by Stephanie A. Sanders, Ph.D. and June Machover Reinisch, Ph.D. for The Kinsey Institute of Research on Sex Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University asked 600 undergraduate students at a Midwestern university a series of questions regarding sexually related situations.

Rachael Anderson, the UA's Arizona Health Sciences Library director, said Lundberg should have the liberty to decide what can go to print.

"He has done a lot to upgrade the journal and raised issue of public policy," she said. "I think (because of) the caliber of JAMA, the editors should be able to exercise their best scientific judgment."

The possibility of a politically-linked decision, however, would be a problem, Anderson added.

"I would be concerned if there was political pressure," she said.

Anderson noted Lundberg was on the panel of speakers at the opening of the Arizona Health Sciences Library in 1993.