New England Medical Journal Names New Editor in Chief

Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, a kidney disease specialist at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, has been selected as the new editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, the Massachusetts Medical Society announced Tuesday.

Kassirer, 58, will assume his new position, one of the most influential in American medicine, in July. He succeeds Dr. Arnold S. Relman, who will retire after 14 years as the journal’s editor.

Kassirer is well known within the medical community for research on the process by which physicians diagnose patients’ problems and choose therapies. Kassirer’s decisions about which articles to publish will play a key role in defining the nation’s medical agenda.

The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Assn., or JAMA, are considered the nation’s leading medical journals. The New England Journal is the preeminent journal among academic physicians. JAMA is widely read by practicing physicians and government policy-makers.

Relman, also a kidney disease specialist, has been criticized for attempting to exert excessive control over the release of critical medical information to the public and physicians.

Kassirer told a news conference he had no major agenda going into his new job but indicated that he would continue the journal’s long-standing--and often controversial--policy of not printing most studies that have received prior publicity.