American Medical Association

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said yesterday that she agreed to edit the American Medical Association's prestigious journal only after receiving assurances that the AMA would not meddle in editorial decisions."

Paul Jarrico, 82, was killed Tuesday in a traffic accident hours after being honored as a survivor of the Hollywood blacklisting of the 1940s and 1950s. The writer's car slammed head-on into a tree in Oxnard, Calif.Abdul-Amir Malla, 55, an Iraqi poet and novelist and an official of the ruling party who wrote a biography of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, died Tuesday in Baghdad of a brain clot, the official Iraqi news agency reported.William Herbert Crook, 72, former director of the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)

IN RETURN FOR its recent decision to endorse a line of heating pads, thermometers and other products made by the Sunbeam Corp., the American Medical Association is expected to gain millions of dollars in royalties. But no amount of money will be enough to restore what the organization has lost in reputation by agreeing to a deal fraught with conflicts of interest.In promising Sunbeam that it will not endorse a rival's product, for instance, the AMA has abrogated its right to steer consumers toward better products and compromised its ability to warn consumers about defective ones.

As more consumers turn to the Internet for information on health and medicine, doctors and other health-care professionals are talking about setting voluntary standards to help their patients separate substance from snake oil."The Internet too often resembles a cocktail conversation rather than a tool for effective health-care communication and decision-making," warn the authors of an editorial in a recent edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.The article proposes four "core standards" for medical information on the 'Net.

The most popular New Year's resolutions made for 1996 fall into one category: health. According to a new survey by the American Medical Association, people want to be thinner and more fit, rested and relaxed.The same survey finds that more than half of those who make resolutions to be that way won't do anything about them.Still, after years of experts preaching and teaching to a stubborn public, society seems to have recognized its common vices and absorbed messages on such things as cutting fat from diets, exercising and quitting smoking.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican plan to shrink Medicare is on the verge of approval in the House, with GOP leaders having neutralized much of their opposition with a combination of favors and threats for interest groups that stood to lose billions of dollars.Doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, medical schools, medical equipment manufacturers and advocates for the elderly all helped craft the bill, took whatever sweeteners they could get and generally withheld criticism, at least until the proposal was unveiled.

The death rate from asthma has more than doubled in the United States since 1978. And worried officials of the National Institutes of Health attribute the trend in part to the lack of education and training of the primary-care doctors who treat the vast majority of asthmatics.Dr. Michael A. Kaliner, chief of the allergy section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not mince words in criticizing the medical care that most asthmatics receive and the lack of understanding by many doctors about new treatments.

Dr. William C. Dooley's bedside manner is distinctly modern. He makes his rounds at Johns Hopkins Hospital with a computer under his arm.A quick tap on the keyboard and he can call up the medical records of his patients. It is part of the effort at the Baltimore hospital, an institution drowning in records, accounts and bills, to become paperless by the year 2000. More importantly, it enables Dr. Dooley, a surgical oncologist, to do a better job.Eventually, he predicts, he will be able to look not only at his own patients' histories but at similar cases across the country, consult doctors in other hospitals and search through any medical library -- all within seconds, all at the bedside.

WESTMINSTER -- James S. Wright, a psychiatrist with 30 years experience and a specialist in the care of adolescents and TC older adults, has joined the staff of Carroll County General Hospital.He is a graduate of University College Dublin Medical School in Ireland, with training at Altrincham General Hospital in Manchester, England, and Crichton Royal Hospital in Scotland.Dr. Wright served residencies in neurology in Belfast, Ireland; family practice at the University of Maryland in Baltimore; and training and fellowship at Seton Institute in Baltimore.

MIFEPRISTONE is a medication that would enable 750,000 Americans each year to avoid surgery.By avoiding this surgery, patients have much less risk of infection in their internal organs. Eighty percent of patients prefer the drug to surgery. Half of American cities and 93 percent of rural counties do not have a doctor who performs the surgery. Mifepristone can be given in any doctor's office. The drug also would make a half-million other operations easier and less traumatic. The American Medical Association calls it an "efficacious and safe" treatment.

Delay execution regulations While we failed this year to repeal Maryland's violation of the Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, we will be back. The Baltimore Sun's admirable stance over the years against the death penalty has always been appreciated. Yet I am baffled by the editorial "A dishonest delay" (June 26). The writer seems confused: "legislators shouldn't drag out approvals of execution regulations to maintain a moratorium; the governor should commute death sentences instead."

Liability limits save access to care Proven medical liability reforms, including a cap on noneconomic damages, are working to keep Maryland physicians caring for patients while still allowing injured patients access to the court system. In fact, as the column from the president of the Maryland trial lawyers association suggests, about the only people complaining are trial lawyers ("Time to treat malpractice victims fairly," Feb. 27). In states without such reforms, many cases result in runaway jury awards for noneconomic damages.

The nation's chief medical association apologized yesterday for decades of past discrimination against African-American physicians, when it effectively denied membership to many black doctors - which many believe has left a legacy of separate and unequal care. The American Medical Association released an article and commentary acknowledging discriminatory practices that, although ended decades ago, still affect medical care. For example, until 1968 it limited membership to doctors who were also members of a state-level affiliate - many of which were segregated.

Dr. Harry S. Gimbel, an old-fashioned general practitioner who made house calls long after others had stopped, died Sunday in his sleep at his Pikesville home. He was 96. Dr Gimbel practiced for about 50 years, and patients who came to his Catonsville office were seen without appointments. His two sons are orthopedic surgeons who live in Phoenix, Ariz. Dr. Gimbel worked seven days a week and would leave work late in the afternoon, rest for half an hour, eat dinner at 5 p.m., and then return to his office, where he saw patients until 9 p.m. "He did this three or four nights a week," recalled one of his sons, Dr. Neal I. Gimbel.

Nov. 12 1987 The American Medical Association issued a policy saying it was unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person had AIDS or was HIV-positive.

Through all his years in politics, despite the endless obligation to shake hands, smile for the cameras and coax money out of contributors, Sen. John McCain has somehow avoided becoming a complete phony. Annoy Mr. McCain, and you won't have to wait long to find out. Even a sickly, soft-spoken woman in a wheelchair gets no pass from him. The other day, at a meeting with voters in New Hampshire, Linda Macia mentioned her use of medical marijuana and politely asked his position on permitting it. Barely were the words out of her mouth before Mr. McCain spun on his heel, stalked away and heaped scorn on the idea.

CHICAGO -- The American Medical Association voted overwhelmingly yesterday to back a campaign to halve the amount of sodium in restaurant and processed foods during the next 10 years. At the same time, the nation's largest doctors group urged the Food and Drug Administration to revoke rules that have allowed sodium to go unregulated for decades. Under the rules, salt and its component sodium are included in the "generally recognized as safe" category. The AMA's support for revoking salt's status is similar to a petition filed last fall by the Center for Scientists in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group, which also sought to void the rule.

CHICAGO - The American Medical Association voted yesterday to put its weight behind legislative initiatives around the United States requiring pharmacies to fill legally valid prescriptions in the wake of recently publicized refusals by pharmacists opposed to dispensing morning-after contraception. If the pharmacist has objections, pharmacies should provide for an "immediate referral to an appropriate alternative dispensing pharmacy without interference," according to the resolution passed by the group's policymaking House of Delegates.

For the past five years, top-ranking Democratic Party official Bradley Marshall has squeezed time into his jammed schedule to visit Baltimore - for his annual physical. But getting an appointment isn't as easy as it used to be. Marshall is one of more than a thousand people who participate each year in Johns Hopkins Medicine's Executive Health Program, a project created a decade ago by Dr. George H. Sack Jr. in part to change the way doctors administer annual physical exams. "It used to be your doctor looked down your throat, checked your blood pressure and sent you on your way," says Marshall, 50, the chief financial officer for the Democratic National Committee in Washington.

The percentage of teenage girls who drink alcoholic beverages is rising faster than that of boys and, on average, the girls take their first drink at age 13, the American Medical Association said yesterday in reporting the findings of two surveys. The AMA contends that a class of beverages informally known as "alcopops" is partly to blame, and it is warning doctors to educate teenagers about the dangers of such sweet drinks. The polls indicate that teenage girls are most vulnerable to the marketing of the beverages, which contain 5 percent to 7 percent alcohol and have such names as Rick's Spiked Lemonade, Doc Otis' Hard Lemon Flavored Malt Beverage, Mike's Hard Lemonade, and Hooper's Hooch Lemon Brew.