Product Endorsement Fiasco Stirs Up AMA Delegates

Dissension over a discarded product-endorsement plan dominated the opening of an American Medical Assn. convention Sunday in the group’s first contested presidential election in five years.

The debate centered on what role Dr. Thomas R. Reardon, the AMA’s chairman, may have had in the five-year agreement under which the AMA would give its “seal of approval” to Sunbeam Corp. products it had not tested. The AMA revoked the deal a week after it was announced in August following a storm of protest from members.

Reardon is being challenged for the presidency by Dr. Raymond Scalettar, put forward Sunday by the Medical Society of the District of Columbia because of the Sunbeam controversy.

AMA members attending the annual House of Delegates meeting wanted to know who ultimately was responsible for the Sunbeam fiasco, how much it would cost and whether there are other possible commercial endorsements on the table.

They got only partial answers and a plea from Reardon to put the matter behind them.

An internal investigation submitted Sunday said it is clear Reardon and the board of trustees had no reason to suspect a venture with Sunbeam was imminent.

It said AMA staff either ignored or failed to recognize that the Sunbeam contract violated policy. There was no evidence staff members acted for personal financial gain, the report added.

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Rebel doctors produced a staff memo presented at a trustees committee meeting two months before the Sunbeam announcement. The memo mentioned Sunbeam and other commercial partnerships.

The head of the internal investigation said that memo was the only evidence pointing to prior knowledge of the board, but noted that it was buried at the bottom of a mass of other material given trustees.

“It was deliberate subterfuge by people no longer employed by the AMA,” said Dr. Mark A. Levine. Several top executives were fired after the Sunbeam debacle.

AMA member Dr. Ann Marie Dunlap of Chicago rejected the excuse, likening it to a malpractice defense “in which a doctor says he did not see a lab test because it was at the bottom of a stack of papers.”

Scalettar doubted that the chairman, who works closely with senior staff members, would be unaware a commercial deal was in the works.

“That does not wash,” he said.

Delegates will vote on the two candidates Wednesday. The winner will be inaugurated in June 1999, after the one-year tenure of the incoming president, Dr. Nancy Dickey.

The 150-year-old AMA is the nation’s largest organization of physicians, representing 290,000 members, or about 40% of U.S. doctors.