Top Medical Journal in the Tank for Obama?

As America's premier medical publication, The New England Journal of Medicine is more likely to publish articles with titles like "Recurrent Rearrangements of Chromosome 1q21.1 and Variable Pediatric Phenotypes" than to get down in the political trenches.

But with the election looming, NEJM made an exception this week, publishing reviews of the health-care plans put forth by Barack Obama and John McCain. Each article is written from a critical, adversarial viewpoint. But a discrepancy in the status of the reviewers opens up the venerable journal to charges of, yes, liberal media bias.

Of the two articles, David Blumenthal's analysis of McCain's plan is notably more scathing, from its title -- "Primum Non Nocere -- The McCain Plan for Health Insecurity" -- onward. "John McCain emerges not as a maverick or centrist but as a radical social conservative firmly in the grip of the ideology that animates the domestic policies of George W. Bush," writes Blumenthal. He concludes: "Senator McCain's plan does not demonstrate the kind of judgment needed in a potential commander in chief."

It's exactly the kind of talking-points-rich invective you'd expect from "an unpaid advisor to the Obama for President campaign" -- which is what Blumenthal is, according to a small-type end note.

In contrast, Joseph Antos's write-up of Obama's plan -- "Symptomatic Relief, but No Cure -- The Obama Health Care Reform" -- is comparatively gentle, determining that the Democrat's proposals "address the symptoms but not the underlying disease that afflicts the health care system.... Although the plan would significantly increase the number of Americans with health insurance, it remains to be seen whether that would come at a price Americans would be willing to pay."

Antos, according to his credit line, has no conflict of interest, although he is affiliated with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

Why would the NEJM allow an out-and-out Obama partisan to shred McCain's plan while assigning someone unaffiliated with either campaign to review McCain's? If editor in chief Jeffrey M. Drazen had a good reason for doing so, he's keeping it to himself. I emailed him on Sunday for comment but have yet to hear back.