{"id":184470,"date":"2018-10-06T21:33:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-07T01:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=184470"},"modified":"2018-10-06T21:33:47","modified_gmt":"2018-10-07T01:33:47","slug":"canadian-medical-association-resigns-world-body-amid-plagiarism-accusations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/10\/06\/canadian-medical-association-resigns-world-body-amid-plagiarism-accusations\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Medical Association resigns from world body amid plagiarism accusations"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“We then decided to take a stand against what we considered an ethical breach,” Osler said. (File Photo<\/a>: Dr. F. Gigi Osler\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

REYKJAVIK, Iceland \u2014 The Canadian Medical Association says it has resigned from the World Medical Association, accusing the international group’s incoming president of plagiarizing his inaugural speech.<\/p>\n

In a statement released on Saturday, the CMA said it discovered that part of Dr. Leonid Eidelman’s speech was taken from a former CMA president’s speech in 2014.<\/p>\n

“Multiple other parts of the speech were also copied from various websites, blogs and news articles, without appropriate attribution to the authors,” the CMA statement read.<\/p>\n

Current CMA president Gigi Osler said she and a Canadian delegation were in Iceland this week for the WMA’s annual general assembly, where major issues and topics in medicine are discussed.<\/p>\n

Osler said she and other delegates found that a section of Eidelman’s inaugural address was “copied word for word” from a speech given by former CMA president Dr. Chris Simpson’s in 2014.<\/p>\n

“We then decided to take a stand against what we considered an ethical breach,” Osler said.<\/p>\n

The Canadian delegation presented a motion to the assembly requesting that Eidelman resign, but Osler said it was defeated, which led the CMA to pull its membership from the world body.<\/p>\n

“Leaders have to uphold high standards of ethics and professionalism and so we are disappointed,” she said in an interview.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the WMA wrote in an email that Eidelman was not aware his speech was plagiarized because he used speech writers.<\/p>\n

Nigel Duncan said Eidelman apologized at the general assembly, and acknowledges that part of his speech was taken from Simpson.<\/p>\n

WMA vice chairman, Frank Montgomery, released a statement Saturday responding to the CMA’s resignation.<\/p>\n

“We very much regret\u00a0Canada’s decision. Delegates from the Canadian Medical Association have been valuable participants in WMA affairs for many years,” Montgomery said.<\/p>\n

“We hope that in time they will return to the association and we will welcome that day.”<\/p>\n

Osler said she and the Canadian delegation had left the assembly and were not present for Eidelman’s apology.<\/p>\n

She said she’s open to discussing with the CMA a possible return to the WMA, but as of now she stands by the decision to step away from the world body.<\/p>\n

“We must continue to hold ourselves to a high standard of professionalism and ethical behaviour,” said Osler. “We are going to strive to uphold honesty, humility, integrity and prudence.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

REYKJAVIK, Iceland \u2014 The Canadian Medical Association says it has resigned from the World Medical Association, accusing the international group’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":184471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-alanna-rizza","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}