American Medical Association (AMA)

The American Medical Association (AMA) is the largest and most influential organization representing medicine in the United States. The AMA was founded in 1847 with the aim of improving medical education and establishing a code of medical ethics (and thereby improving the status of the profession). Today, the AMA maintains those aims within its more general advocacy for the welfare of physicians and the health of the public.

The AMA is both a membership organization and an umbrella organization; that is, physicians can join as individuals (roughly a third of physicians do so), but the House of Delegates consists of representatives of specialty organizations (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics) and state medical societies (e.g., the Michigan State Medical Society). Each of these organizations has its own method of choosing delegates. The officers of the AMA itself (its president, board members, etc.) are elected by the House of Delegates. The duality of this structure creates certain internal conflicts: Funding comes from the dues of the individual physician members, but policy is made by the House of Delegates.

Five AMA councils advise the House of Delegates as well as produce authoritative statements on their own. They are the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA), the Council on Long Range Planning and Development, the Council on Medical Education, the Council on Medical Service, and the Council on Science and Public Health.

The AMA publishes the highly respected Journal of the American Medical Association(founded 1883) and contributes to the publication of nine important Archives (not literally archives but peer-reviewed professional journals for particular specialties). They are the Archives of Internal Medicine, the Archives of Neurology, the Archives of Ophthalmology, the Archives of General Psychiatry, the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, the Archives of Dermatology, the Archives of Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery, and the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.

Members are offered various kinds of assistance in medical practice: They can, for instance, purchase a demographic analysis of areas where there are high numbers of potential patients. The AMA's “Physician Select” is an online database including virtually every licensed physician in the United States and its possessions; listings of AMA members offer considerably more information than listings of nonmembers. Osteopaths, the only other group of physicians recognized in the United States, are accepted as members of the AMA and are listed in the Physician Select database.

The code of ethics adopted in 1847 closely resembled Thomas Percival's 1803 Code of Medical Ethics, a document marking the move from vague oaths of honor to codified behavioral requirements. The AMA was the first national assembly of professionals to propose a code of conduct for all its members and the first to present it as an explicit social contract between the profession, its patients, and the general public. The original code has been revised several times; in the 1950s, there was an attempt to separate etiquette from ethics and in the 1970s, to separate law from ethics. Today's code includes, besides nine statements of basic principle, the opinions of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA). These address nearly 200 topics, ranging from the use of placebos through assisting a suicide, testifying in court, and patenting medical inventions. CEJA Reports, giving the rationale for these opinions, are available separately.

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