Nuclear Warfare: JAMA Is Too Political and Too One-Sided

To the Editor.—  We wish to protest the blatantly political content of the Aug 2, 1985, issue of JAMA. The MEDICAL NEWS and LETTERS sections each contain two pieces on the theme of atomic warfare, and the SPECIAL COMMUNICATIONS, COMMENTARIES, and EDITORIALS contain a total of eight pieces, all with the same political tenor. The BOOKS section reviews five books dealing with nuclear war.We wonder if these pieces went through a peer review process. Articles with very similar contents by some of the same authors have previously appeared in other journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Annals of Internal Medicine, and one looks in vain for authors representing opposing viewpoints, eg, on the nuclear freeze.We suggest that JAMA refrain from expressing one particular political viewpoint and continue to publish high-quality medical research articles as it has done in the past.