Howard Wolinsky, medical writer at the Chicago Sun-Times since 1981, and Tom Brune, investigative reporter and editor at the Sun-Times since 1983, have written a book that will not only be of interest to most chiropractors, but should appeal to a broad spectrum of Americans. The authors point out that while there have been many books about medicine, there has not been an independent book that scrutinizes the AMA for the general reader since journalist James Rorty's American Medicine Mobilized in 1939.
The book is divided into 9 chapters. Chapter 6, "Medical Monopoly, Waging War on Alternative Medicine," details a story that doesn't get broad media coverage: the AMA's campaign against the "menace of chiropractic." Even DCs will learn a thing or two from reading Chapter 6.
The book contains many interesting tid-bits:
- About 20 percent of the AMA's operating revenue is from pharmaceutical advertising.
- The financial scandals that brought about the resignation of the AMA's chief executive.
- The AMA's cultivation of a new "friendlier, wiser" AMA, which is really just the "old AMA in freshly laundered surgical scrubs," still engaged in "confrontation, ultimatums, and hardball politics."
- Why and how the AMA transformed their symbol in 1990.
- Why the AMA "is not the scientific authority it once was."
- The AMA PR staff disseminates 4,000 news releases to medical and science journalists -- each week.
- The full dues paying AMA membership is "less that half of what it was 20 years ago."
- Inside workings of the AMA House of Delegates.
- Only 23 percent surveyed said "AMA was very reliable source of information."
- Doctors' average income: $177,400.
- How the AMA fought against passage of Medicare.
- AMA has spent more than $100 million in the past two decades in lobbying activities in Washington.
- Discover how much the AMA's Political Action Committee has invested in your congressman/senator.
- How the Iowa Medical Society's general counsel guided the anti-chiropractic campaign and was hired as the AMA's general counsel.
- The "'AMA's Adolf Eichmann,' a bureaucrat who followed orders to destroy undesirables."
After reading this book, you'll know more about the AMA than the average AMA member. We highly recommend it for you and your patients.
P.S. You'll also learn why the AMA's communications director called co-author Howard Wolinsky a "snake," now a moniker used by Wolinsky's Chicago Sun-Times cohorts.
The Serpent on the Staff is a Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Book, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
Dynamic Chiropractic editorial staff members research, investigate and write articles for the publication on an ongoing basis. To contact the Editorial Department or submit an article of your own for consideration, email
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