Off Ag'in, On Ag'in

The 12,000 doctors who attended the American Medical Association's 100th annual convention were prepared to fix their attention on matters medical, confident that their great battle against "socialized medicine" had been won. At the outset, retiring President Elmer L. Henderson announced that the husband & wife team of Whitaker & Baxter, who have run A.M.A.'s high-powered propaganda campaign against compulsory health insurance, had finished their job. Said Surgeon Henderson: "As of now, we have defeated the efforts to socialize medicine."

"We're like surgeons in public relations," explained platinum-haired Clem Whitaker, who got $100,000 a year for running the $4,500,000 campaign. "We perform the operation, and when the patient recovers we move out." Whitaker & Baxter had been working full time for A.M.A., needling doctors and public alike to fight the Truman-Ewing health scheme (TIME, Feb. 20, 1950). They were itching to get back to California and round up some new accounts.

In midweek A.M.A.'s board of trustees made a complete about-face, announced that it had decided to keep Whitaker & Baxter for another year. Puzzled delegates were given no insight into inner-circle reasoning. Whitaker "guessed" that the board wanted to keep the fire department alerted "in case the fire breaks out again." Still unsettled: Whitaker & Baxter's new salary. One thing settled: they will be free to take other clients, serve A.M.A. chiefly as consultants.

The convention also:

P: Installed Surgeon John Wesley Cline of San Francisco as A.M.A. president, and chose Heart Specialist Louis Hopewell Bauer of Hempstead, N.Y. as president elect for next year.

P: Decided that while yearly federal aid for hard-up medical schools would be bad (it might be habit-forming), the Government could properly help out with lump sums for construction programs.

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