Lightning Rod

For years, no meeting of the American Medical Association has been complete without a rumor that contentious, energetic Dr. Morris Fishbein would be ousted as editor of A.M.A.'s Journal, which is the only official position he has ever held in U.S. medicine's topmost organization. But through most of his 37 years with A.M.A. (he will be 60 in July), Dr. Fishbein went serenely on as official spokesman for U.S. doctors. He was "Dr. A.M.A." and the man to quote on anything medical. He was quoted so often that few of his bosses ever got much attention. The front man was the whole show.

Through the years some doctors grew envious of the publicity and money, that Dr. Fishbein got as traveler, radio speaker, newspaper columnist and author of 21 popular medical books that have sold 3,000,000 copies. Others resented the efficient battles he fought against anything that smacked of socialized medicine.

Last week at the annual meeting in Atlantic City, the A.M.A. hierarchy dumped Dr. Fishbein. It was done so brutally that even his enemies felt a little sorry for him.

No Controversy. Dr. Elmer L. Henderson, of Louisville, Ky., chairman of the Board of Trustees, handed out the black spot toward the end of the dull opening session of the House of Delegates in the Hotel Traymore's white and gold American room. Dr. Henderson, later named president-elect in a cut & dried election, began his report on "the activities of the editor" with an admission that "the board ... is aware of the criticism of the editor." Fishbein's name was not mentioned until the next-to-last paragraph. Then there was a suave tribute to his "genius and devotion." In the paragraphs between, Dr. Fishbein got his walking papers.

As soon as someone could be trained to take over the job, Morris Fishbein would be retired as editor of the Journal he had built into the largest medical periodical in the world. He was brusquely ordered to stop forthwith all speeches on controversial topics, to give no interviews except on scientific subjects, to submit editorials on controversial subjects for approval. Most delegates understood that Dr. Fishbein was being used as a lightning rod to divert criticism from A.M.A. while his bosses continued to fight socialized medicine tooth & nail.

No Change. Nobody was fooled--least of all the liberals who lean toward just a little harmless bit of "socialization" in medicine--into thinking that Fishbein's firing meant a change in fundamental A.M.A. attitude. The tipoff came three days later, when the delegates passed the buck on approval of the controversial prepaid medical plans run by laymen back to the local societies--in the past, the bitterest enemies of prepaid plans. The House, without committing itself, passed along a set of principles to "guide" the local societies in this old fight.

Within some 30 feet of the House of Delegates' meeting room was a poster reprodution of The Doctor, Sir Luke Fildes' sentimental 1891 picture of what a press release called "a renowned physician in faithful attendance at the bedside of a peasant child in her humble cottage." A.M.A. propagandists had added, in big type: "Keep politics out of this picture." They hope to have copies in 100,000 doctors' offices within a few months, thousands more in dentists' offices, drugstores. Yet doctors in & out of the House of Delegates were up to their cervical vertebrae in politics. What baffled many of them was that the man who had fought their fight well had been summarily kicked out of a battle that was to be fought with his strategy, but not with his tactics.

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