The money elephant in the corner

The Globe and Mail today somehow managed to write a very long editorial about affairs at the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) without ever once mentioning money. And, as has been said before here, this whole brouhaha pivots around the decision earlier this year by the Canadian Medical Association to privatize its prestigious medical journal. That's why Graham Morris was hired as Publisher. That's why the pressure is on not to cheese off the pharmaceutical companies who buy advertising. That's why the Editor and Senior Editor were expendable, since they clearly didn't subscribe to the program of commercialization which was so at odds with what a peer-reviewed, trusted, medical journal does. That's why the editorial board resigned and why they, too, were treated as so much flotsam by the President of the CMA. That's why the even-more-prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a very strongly worded piece about the whole affair. To repeat, when they say it's the principle, not the money...it's the money.