SAN PABLO, Calif. -- It may be a good thing that Dr. Lonnie R. Bristow, the next president of the American Medical Association, is on the road so much.
His office is the size of a large-ish closet and equally as drab, a strikingly non-slick setting for the man who next week will hold the highest position in organized medicine.
A former college quarterback who dreamed of going pro, Dr. Bristow takes up most of the office when he enters. Squeezed into his desk beneath the one touch of glamour -- an autographed black-and-white photograph of singer Lena Horne -- Bristow outlines a populist vision of the AMA in which the group is as down-to-earth as his digs are.
Never mind that the AMA is one of the top 10 political action campaign contributors, and in 1993 gave money to 86 percent of the members of Congress. Or that critics say its leading concern is protecting doctors' incomes.
Dr. Bristow, 65, has a different perception.
"I'd love to see the day come when the people of America consider the AMA as their AMA," he said. "There is a long-standing misconception of what we're about."
In Dr. Bristow's vision, the AMA would close down the tobacco industry, sponsor health clubs for children and older Americans, and push for legislation to end so-called "managed profiteering" by corporation-run health maintenance organizations.
"His views are probably as progressive or more progressive than most AMA presidents," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the health research division for the nonprofit group Public Citizen. "He's also been around the AMA long enough to see the demise of a number of proposals put forth and never passed."
Dr. Wolfe, an AMA critic, said most U.S. doctors don't join the 295,000-member AMA because they disagree with the group's lobbying activities.
Howard Wolinsky, co-author of "The Serpent on the Staff," a book critical of the AMA, said, "They were in bed with the tobacco industry for many years. Why? Because they were trying to make deals with Congress members from the South to stop Medicare."
Another part of AMA history that many found distasteful was its reluctance to ban discrimination. In 1895, a group of black physicians founded the National Medical Association in part because they were not allowed to join the AMA.
Black physicians picketed the AMA annual meeting from 1963 to 1968 to protest the exclusion of blacks from many state and county medical societies.
