Global health advocate Rhona MacDonald has been fired from her position as senior editor at The Lancet for what she describes as a violation of the confidentiality policy held by the journal's publisher Elsevier.

MacDonald, who had worked at The Lancet for more than three years, said that she was disciplined for sending out a draft and a final version of an editorial she said she wrote about the future of the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) -- which oversees the country's international development and poverty reduction efforts -- to several third parties.

MacDonald emailed the two versions of the editorial to colleagues and sources she'd interviewed on background for the piece because, according to a statement she emailed to The Scientist, The Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, "changed the whole meaning of the editorial without giving me...the opportunity to make any comments or suggestions before the editorial went to press."

"I was completely scandalized," MacDonald told The Scientist.

Prior to 1997, under a UK government run by the Conservative Party, the UK's global aid efforts were coordinated by the Overseas Development Administration, a wing of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and focused mainly on economic development. In 1997, the DFID was formed as a separate entity with its own cabinet-level minister at the helm.

The editorial -- which, like all editorials in the journal, is signed simply "The Lancet" -- was published in the journal's March 20th issue. It called upon the to-be-elected government to carefully consider the functional separation that exists between DFID and the FCO, and seemed to argue for returning to the strategy of combining global health and economic development efforts, a position held by the Conservative party, which triumphed in the recent elections.

"The departmental division between development (including global health) and foreign policy weakens the UK's influence internationally," the published editorial read. "The current fragmentation of responsibilities weakens the UK's beneficial influence and dilutes the important contribution health can make not only to development but also to foreign policy."

MacDonald's version, however, was much more complimentary of DFID, arguing that it be kept a separate and robust body to more adequately serve the global poor.

"The thought of DFID ceasing to exist, or its policies to tackle poverty and poor health being watered-down or ripped up has lead us to appreciate, more keenly, what we, the UK, and the rest of the world, have in DFID," MacDonald's version stated in language missing from the published version. "Whatever happens at the next election, the groundbreaking work that DFID has started must carry on."

"I think [the published editorial is] very harmful to poor people in the world," she said. "I was horrified." Angry at the changes, which MacDonald claimed were made at the 11th hour with very little opportunity to protest, she sent out emails seeking to dissociate herself from the published version after the piece went to press but before it appeared in The Lancet's 20th March issue.

Elsevier is keeping mum on this one. "We have respected the confidentiality of the circumstances of Rhona's departure from the company and wish to continue to do so," Elsevier spokesperson Tom Reller told The Scientist. "We consider it appropriate to make it clear that the company does not agree with the statements Rhona has made upon her departure, but we do not consider it appropriate to comment further."

More on this developing situation to come on the-scientist.com.


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