The American Medical Association’s Joint Oversight Committee announced that Howard Bauchner, MD, is on leave beginning at the end of the day on March 25. Dr. Bauchner is the top editor at JAMA, the journal of the AMA.
“The decision to place the editor-in-chief on administrative leave neither implicates nor exonerates individuals and is standard operating procedure for such investigations,” the committee said in a statement.
More than 2,000 people signed a petition on Change.org calling for an investigation at JAMA over the February podcast episode, called “Structural Racism for Doctors: What Is It?”
Already, Edward H. Livingston, MD, the host of the podcast, has resigned as deputy editor of the journal.
During the podcast, Dr. Livingston, who is White, said, “Structural racism is an unfortunate term. Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help. Many of us are offended by the concept that we are racist.”
The audio of the podcast has been deleted from JAMA’s website. In its place is audio of a statement from Dr. Bauchner. In his statement, which he released in the week prior to his being on leave, he said the comments in the podcast, which also featured Mitch Katz, MD, were “inaccurate, offensive, hurtful, and inconsistent with the standards of JAMA.”
Also deleted was a JAMA tweet promoting the podcast episode. The tweet said: “No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care? An explanation of the idea by doctors for doctors in this user-friendly podcast.”
This story will be updated.
A version of this article first appeared on WedMD.com.