The tough talk of JAMA’s editor in chief

She certainly has her enemies:

“This idea that money is evil and academia is made up of saints is nonsense,” Dr. Stossel said. “Some of my vaunted academic colleagues would run their grandmothers over.” He favors disclosure, too, he said, but journal editors “have acquired halos and become arbiters of scientific morality.”

“There’s this myth that if Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and Catherine DeAngelis got up and told us what to do, the public’s health would be better off,” he said. “That’s not true.”

As well as a radical do-good attitude:

Dr. DeAngelis will not let companies buy advertisements in issues in which their products are studied, and when she attends a medical dinner and discovers a drug company has paid for it, she said: ““I don’t eat. It kills me, but I only drink water. Tap water.””

That is one of her relatively mainstream views. By contrast, she wants it to be a crime for doctors to accept any gift from drug company representatives.

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