Yesterday I took the whole bio-ethics community to task and lampooned the bogus arguments by Dr. Howard Brody. (Of course, I am familiar with a few honorable exceptions.) I take some of it back: at least one ethicist understands the gravity of the conflicts of interest at AJOB. (Hat tip to this interesting blog.) Lantos has resigned from the AJOB editorial board and is effectively boycotting the journal: "As long as the current leadership structure is in place, I will no longer submit papers to AJOB. I have withdrawn a paper that was in press and due out in March. I will discourage my colleagues from submitting papers to AJOB. I will not cite papers published in AJOB."
Some other quotes from Lantos' resignation letter: "the journal has lost credibility in ways that tarnish not just the names of people associated with it but also the reputation of the entire field of bioethics....Imagine that the Editor of the New England Journal took a job as Vice President at Merck, and the Mass Medical Society asked him to stay on as Editor, opining that the conflicts of interest would be manageable. One might rightly wonder, “What are these people smoking?” More here.
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