In Memoriam: The Sudden Demise of the AMA Journal of Ethics

Nursing ethics is grounded in "inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person" (ANA) in alignment with principles of Christian liberty and the American Founding.

Medical ethics is older, and traditionally more disease-focused, self-sustaining, and authoritarian. (4 Principles of Biomedical Ethics) Bioethics in particular has made a bad reputation for itself in association with assisted suicide and reduced standards for organ donation/ declaring brain death.

Lippincott makes a fair comparison between the two codes of ethics.

Both have recently strayed from dedication to the individual in their care, and instead toward population care and ESG (environmental, social justice, and governance).

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/118526

In Memoriam: The Sudden Demise of the AMA Journal of Ethics

— A great loss for physicians, the profession, and the public

November 14, 2025

Bioethics is a small field, but we punch above our weight when it comes to writing. Professional journal articles, reports, and policies are arguably our primary written products, since the main job in bioethics is to help clinicians and others navigate ethical challenges in their work. But we also write for the public, in forums like blogs and editorials, since many of the issues we write about have broader implications. Consequently, learning to write for publication is a key skill for bioethicists, and professional journals are critical for the field. One particular journal -- the AMA Journal of Ethics (AMA JoE) -- has been a stalwart in giving a voice to newcomers to the field.

In late October, without warning, the American Medical Association (AMA) announced that it would cease publishing AMA JoE after the December 2025 issue. Journals like AMA JoE operate a year or more in advance, so multiple authors and editors of upcoming issues for 2026-2027 were left in the lurch by this unexpected announcement. Students and trainees are now scrambling to find new homes for their articles, some of which have already undergone extensive editorial review.

The Birth of AMA JoE

For over 25 years, AMA JoE stood out from the rest of bioethics journals. It was a rare monthly open access journal that tackled a remarkably wide variety of topics. The journal has a unique model where students and trainees competitively apply to edit a theme issue of their choosing, and then they work closely with professional editors to pull each issue together. This requires a great deal of work by these editors-in-training, including selecting and pitching a topic, identifying mentors and contributors, editing manuscripts, and coordinating with the journal's professional staff.

AMA JoE initially launched in 1999 as an innovative online resource, the Virtual Mentor. The brainchild of Audiey Kao, MD, PhD, vice president of ethics at the AMA, Virtual Mentor was created with a focus on serving students and trainees in medicine. (Full disclosure: both of us were working in the AMA's ethics group at the time, and we each contributed pieces to early issues of the Virtual Mentor, but we were not involved in creating it.) In 2015, the Virtual Mentor was rebranded as the AMA Journal of Ethics, reflecting the journal's maturity into an indexed, professional journal that, while still using learners as editors, also published peer-reviewed work by leading bioethicists, clinicians, and academics.

Why Did the AMA Kill its Journal of Ethics?

The AMA is the nation's largest and most influential medical professional organization, and its Journal of Ethics held the mission of, "illuminating the art of medicine" by being an open access journal, freely available to all, with no advertising, focusing each month on an important ethical issue in healthcare, and, most uniquely perhaps, each issue was edited by health professional trainees and their mentors. Only the AMA, with its mission, resources, and reach, could have produced this journal.

One possible reason for its elimination might be financial. But if financial returns were to be a metric for success, then the AMA JoE had a bad business model from the start: no fees, no subscriptions, no advertising. As Kao argued, a guiding premise for the journal was that "ethics inquiry is a public good" -- hence no fees or subscriptions and no ads (avoiding conflicts of interest is critical in ethics inquiry).

For the AMA, the business case for AMA JoE could never have been about profit; rather, it was about demonstrating the AMA's integrity, altruism, and service to physicians from very early in their careers. The journal aimed to build goodwill, bolster the AMA's reputation, improve ethical deliberation within the profession and, most importantly, entice students and trainees to engage seriously with the organization. By these metrics it has succeeded. Over its more than 25 years in existence, the journal drew innumerable medical students, residents, and fellows into the AMA. It also provided a crucial training ground for young people in medicine who wanted to learn about bioethics and about writing and editing, and it helped build the credibility and presence of the AMA and its ethics group nationally and internationally.

So, if it wasn't about profit, perhaps it was the political environment. The journal encouraged medical trainees to explore some of the most contentious challenges facing medicine and society, so it inherently provided opportunities for controversy. Issues this year have addressed themes of private equity in medicine, regret and surgical professionalism, and evidence-based design in healthcare. Meanwhile, issues in prior years have addressed some currently inflammatory topics, like ethical issues related to transgender surgical care and segregation in healthcare. Remarkably, the journal still very rarely caused public relations problems for the AMA, perhaps because its editorial staff were highly qualified professionals, but also because its approach to controversy was civil, inquisitive, and exploratory.

As Kao wrote in a farewell essay this month: "For over a quarter of a century, the AMA Journal of Ethics has striven to publish insightful commentaries, engaging podcasts, and provocative artwork that help medical students, physicians, and all health care professionals reflect on and make sound ethical decisions in service to patients and society." In fact, the journal often demonstrated exactly this spirit of respectful discussion about challenging ethical issues that we need to rekindle today, making its loss even more tragic and difficult to explain.

AMA JoE: A Value-Added Offering

In a recent opinion piece in MedPage Today, "Medical Societies Are Facing an Existential Crisis," the authors exhorted medical societies, facing declining memberships and engagement among young physicians, to reimagine their role by offering "free basic memberships supplemented by value-added services [that] could attract early-career physicians who might otherwise remain disengaged." AMA JoE was exactly this type of value-added offering that not only served students and trainees, but also educators across health professions. Anecdotally, many health profession educators we know routinely use pieces from AMA JoE in their teaching and now lament its demise.

The AMA has reportedly promised to keep the historical content of the journal accessible on the AMA JoE website. This is no consolation for the students, residents, and fellows who were working on future issues, but it means the legacy of the journal will live on. Someday, we'd like to believe it might even be revived.

For now, we mourn the loss of AMA JoE for the field of bioethics. Even more, we mourn what the AMA's sudden elimination of its ethics journal might mean for physicians, the profession, and the public.

Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, is a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Colorado School of Public Health and director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. Kayhan Parsi, JD, PhD, is a professor and graduate program director at the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. He is also the John B. Francis co-chair in Bioethics at the Center for Practical Bioethics.