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The announcement in JAMA for Jan 1, 1973, of the discontinuation, as of July 1973, of complimentary subscriptions to AMA members of a specialty journal of their choice in addition to JAMA is at the time of this writing too recent to have provoked wide comment among specialty journal subscribers. Science, however, in its "News and Comments" section for Dec 8, 1972, page 1071, has apparently fired the first shot. "Because of the end of free subscription, the fate of these ten specialty journals seems to be very much up in the air." Since other thoughts of this kind will undoubtedly occur, we believe our readers deserve more of an explanation than the terse AMA editorial contained.
The referred-to action of the AMA Trustees is one of several taken not only to institute economies but to strengthen the "family" image of the Association. The others that affect the specialty journals