JAMA Editor Resigns Over Controversial Podcast
This account used to be updated for the length of on March 11.
March 10, 2021 – Edward H. Livingston, MD, has resigned as deputy editor of the journal of the American Scientific Affiliation after he and the journal faced critical backlash over a February podcast that questioned the existence of structural racism.
JAMA Editor-in-Chief Howard Bauchner, MD, apologized to JAMA team and stakeholders and requested for and received Livingston’s resignation, per a press unlock from AMA CEO James Madara.
Extra than 2,000 of us fill signed a petition on Alternate.org calling for an investigation at JAMA over the podcast, called “Structural Racism for Doctors: What Is It?”
It appears to be like they are now getting their wish. Bauchner announced that the journal’s oversight committee is investigating how the podcast and a tweet promoting the episode had been developed, reviewed, and finally posted.
“This investigation and file of its findings will seemingly be thorough and finished impulsively,” Bauchner said.
Livingston, the host of the podcast, has been carefully criticized across social media. All around the podcast, Livingston, who is white, said, “Structural racism is an heart-broken term. For my half, I mediate taking racism out of the conversation could aid. Many of us are offended by the notion that we’re racist.”
The audio of podcast has been deleted from JAMA’s internet situation. In its verbalize is audio of a press unlock from Bauchner. In his statement, which he launched final week, he said the feedback in the podcast, which additionally featured Mitch Katz, MD, had been “incorrect, offensive, hurtful and inconsistent with the standards of JAMA.”
Katz is an editor at JAMA Interior Capsules and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals in Contemporary York City.
Additionally deleted used to be a JAMA tweet promoting the podcast episode. The tweet said: “No doctor is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care? An clarification of the speculation by docs for docs in this particular person-friendly podcast.”
The incident used to be met with enrage and confusion in the medical community.
Herbert C. Smitherman, MD, vice dean of differ and community affairs at Wayne Articulate College College of Capsules in Detroit, accepted after hearing the podcast that it used to be a symptom of a bigger grief.
“At its core, this podcast had racist trends. These attitudes are why you establish no longer fill as many articles by Dim and brown of us in JAMA,” he said. “Of us’s attitudes, whether or no longer awake or unconscious, are what force the insurance policies and practices which salvage the structural racism.”
Katz responded to the backlash final week with the following statement: “Systemic racism exists in our country. The disparate effects of the pandemic fill made this painfully clear in Contemporary York City and across the country.
“As clinicians, we must label how these structures and insurance policies fill a straight away affect on the health outcomes of the patients and communities we abet. It is woefully naïve to recount that no doctor is a racist factual for the reason that Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade it, or that we’ll uncover a contrivance to fill to gentle steer clear of the term ‘systematic racism’ because it makes of us glum. We must and could perhaps save better.”
JAMA, an self reliant arm of the American Scientific Affiliation, is taking other steps to address issues. Its executive author, Thomas Easley, held an employee city corridor this week, and said JAMA acknowledges that “structural racism is true, pernicious and pervasive in health care.” The journal is additionally starting an “end-to-end overview” of all editorial processes across all JAMA publications. In the damage, the journal will additionally salvage a brand contemporary affiliate editor’s scheme who will present “perception and counsel” on racism and structural racism in health care.