JMU Alumni Profile: Marcia Angell ('60)

James Madison University graduate Dr. Marcia Angell ('60) discusses her 'Madison Experience'

(from OneDisc 2004)

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It's likely Dr. Marcia Angell ('60) was just as petite and slender as a Madison College student in the '50s as she is now that she is in her 50s. But don't be deceived: As executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, author, medical and media spokeswoman and Fulbright Scholar, she carries considerable weight.

Time magazine confirmed her prominence last April when it recognized Angell as one of the 25 most influential people in the United States.
At the prestigious journal, Angell has a hand in just about everything we know about our health, from diseases and disorders to the dangers of secondhand cigarette smoke and yo-yo dieting. Physicians worldwide review the journal's carefully scrutinized studies and editorials to help determine treatments. The rest of us regularly rethink our diets and daily routines when the mainstream press provides the layman's version of these same articles. Among its 230,000 subscribers are the nation's major stock brokerage firms, whose clients can win or lose fortunes based on what it reports.
There are plenty of other scientific and health-related publications out there, but none carries as much clout as the one put out by the Massachusetts Medical Society. The person ultimately responsible for its content is Angell, a pathologist who oversees the magazine's operations and 20-member staff. She is second only to the editor-in-chief, Dr. Jerome Kassirer.
"There are no typical days, and that's one of the wonderful things about this job," she says. "The journal comes out 52 times a year - year in, year out. Christmas, Fourth of July ... we have to put out an issue. So there is an extremely rapid pace, a tremendous volume, and the necessity to be flexible and respond to emergencies and stick 11 fingers in the 12 holes in the dike. I like that pace. And I like the tremendous variation of life here."

-- Anne Saita, Montpelier Magazine, Winter 1998

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