SEX SURVEY COSTS EDITOR JOURNAL JOB; MONICAGATE MOTIVE ALLEGED.

Byline: Gina Kolata The New York Times

The American Medical Association dismissed the editor of its leading journal Friday, saying that he had rushed through a paper on whether college students think oral sex is ``having sex'' in order to influence President Clinton's impeachment trial.

But, Dr. E. Ratcliffe Anderson, the executive vice president of the American Medical Association, said the incident, which aroused strong criticism from some medical researchers and journal editors, had followed what he said was a steady erosion of his faith in the editor, Dr. George D. Lundberg.

Although Anderson would not be specific, others said Lundberg had nettled many in the medical community over the years when he published controversial articles.

The paper that proved to be Lundberg's downfall was by Dr. June Machover Reinisch, the former director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University. In it, Reinisch concluded that in an 8-year-old survey of college students, 59 percent said oral sex did not constitute ``having sex.'' The article will appear in the Jan. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Anderson said in a statement that he had dismissed Lundberg because by publishing Reinisch's article now, Lundberg ``has threatened the historic tradition and integrity of the Journal of the American Medical Association by inappropriately and inexcusably interjecting JAMA into a major political debate that has nothing to do with science or medicine.''

At a news conference, Anderson said ``there was an acceleration of the timing'' in the publication of the paper. He added: ``I happen to believe that Dr. Lundberg was focused on sensationalism here, not science. It grieves me greatly that that magnificent journal that should be about science and medicine has been used to extract political leverage.''

In his statement, Anderson also said that ``over time, however, I have lost confidence and trust in Dr. Lundberg's ability to preserve that high level of trust and credibility.''

Lundberg, reached at his home, where he is recovering from a broken elbow, said he could not comment other than to say that Anderson called him at 8:15 a.m. Friday and told him he was no longer editor of the journal. ``My attorney has me under wraps,'' Lundberg said.

The journal, under Lundberg's 17-year term as editor, has taken strong positions on subjects like the dangers of tobacco and the public health threat posed by violence.

It also has published articles that made some in the medical community wince. These included a recent series of articles on alternative medicine; a paper claiming, with what some said was weak evidence, that eating fish slashes the risk of sudden death from heart disease; a paper by an 11-year-old girl who reported that therapeutic touch was a sham; and an anonymous essay by a doctor who told of how he took it upon himself to kill a cancer patient to relieve her suffering.

Some said it was more or less inevitable that Lundberg would lose his job.

``It didn't surprise me,'' said Dr. Richard Smith, the editor of the British Medical Journal, who emphasized that he admires and supports Lundberg. ``I had almost been waiting for it to happen.''

The current paper, by Reinisch, was different from other controversial articles, however, because it was not even a new study. The paper made it clear that the survey's main conclusions were published previously; the oral sex part was, apparently, leftover data.

Reinisch could not be reached for comment, but she told The Washington Times on Thursday that she had thought of submitting a paper on the oral sex findings to a journal last year, but then changed her mind because, she said, she thought the Clinton sex scandal ``would only last two weeks or so,'' whereas ``it usually takes six months to a year to get scientific papers published.''

When the oral sex issue did not go away, Reinisch said, she decided it would be ``irresponsible'' not to publish her data. So she sent a paper to the Journal of the American Medical Association in November.

Of course, the paper has a certain news value now that it would not have had if it were published before or after the Clinton sex scandal, medical experts said.

But the question remains, Why did Lundberg decide to publish it? It typically takes six weeks to six months from the time an article is submitted until it is published, according to a staff member at the American Medical Association.

Anderson said it was his decision to dismiss Lundberg and that he had made it despite an outcry from his own editorial board. One member of that board, Dr. Jack D. Barchas of Cornell University Medical College, said he and others called Anderson to try to stop him from removing Lundberg. ``We were begging him to reconsider,'' Barchas said.

``Many of us feel anger, outrage, and a sense of betrayal by the decision,'' Barchas said. Lundberg, he added, ``has been fearless in publishing papers, even controversial papers, based on the best tradition of science and the best tradition of peer review.''

Dr. Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, which is the chief competitor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, said her journal would never have published the sex survey paper because ``it is trivial - who cares what a bunch of college students say'' about whether oral sex is sex, she said.

``It also is irrelevant to the Clinton case,'' she added. ``He wasn't asked the question in that context.''

But, she said, Lundberg's decision to publish the paper ``is not a reason to fire an editor who's been there 17 years and by almost anyone's estimation has put a small society that no one took seriously on the map.''

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