06/27/2014

Arnold Relman, Health System Critic, Dead at 91

3:05 minutes

Arnold Relman, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and a professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School, passed away last week at the age of 91. Relman was a longtime critic of the American health care system, calling it a “new medical-industrial complex” in a 1980 paper in The New England Journal of Medicine. In a 2009 interview with Science Friday, he said the system had “become a business, and as a business, it wants to constantly increase its sales, and until we change that, we’re not going to have real health care reform.” We remember him here with two archival clips.

Segment Guests

Arnold Relman

Arnold Relman was a former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and professor of medicine emeritus at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Meet the Producer

About Christopher Intagliata

Christopher Intagliata was Science Friday’s senior producer. He once served as a prop in an optical illusion and speaks passable Ira Flatowese.