Arnold S. Relman

Relman died in Cambridge, Massachusetts of melanoma in 2014 at the age of 91. He was married to Harriet Vitkin for 40 years, and together they had three children, David Relman, John Relman, and Margaret Relman Batten. His second wife Marcia Angell also served as editor of NEJM and was the first woman to do so.

In 1999, Relman participated in a Harvard Medical School debate on the subject of unionization of physicians and for-profit health care. His stance was described:

Relman was a decided skeptic regarding the Alternative, Complementary and Integrative Medicine movement. In 1998 he wrote:

Relman was the only person to have been president of the American Federation for Clinical Research, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. In 1988 he was awarded Honorary Fellowship by the New York University School of Medicine.

Relman was editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation from 1962 to 1967. He was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) from 1977 to 1991.

Arnold Seymour Relman (June 17, 1923 – June 17, 2014) — known as Bud Relman to intimates — was an American internist and professor of medicine and social medicine. He was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) from 1977 to 1991, where he instituted two important policies: one asking the popular press not to report on articles before publication and another requiring authors to disclose conflicts of interest. He wrote extensively on medical publishing and reform of the U.S. health care system, advocating non-profit delivery of single-payer health care. Relman ended his career as professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.