Age discrimination

In the summer of 1992 I was targeted for peer review on the basis of my age. It was my opinion that the real reason that I was targeted was because I had been critical of the College for their mismanagement of sexual abuse complaints against Dr James Tyhurst. They had already put a letter of admonishment on my file for expressing my views on this matter. I was, and am, sure they were simply using my age as an excuse to harass me with peer review.


In the summer of 1992 I was targeted for peer review on the basis of my age. It was my opinion that the real reason that I was targeted was because I had been critical of the College for their mismanagement of sexual abuse complaints against Dr James Tyhurst. They had already put a letter of admonishment on my file for expressing my views on this matter. I was, and am, sure they were simply using my age as an excuse to harass me with peer review.

Further it was and is my opinion that it is age discrimination to target a doctor for peer review because he is over 65. For these reasons I refused peer review.

Though I had been BC’s most productive child psychiatrist for many years (three child rearing books and 50 professional papers) the College suspended me from practice and I have been suspended ever since.

I filed a complaint of age discrimination with the BC Human Rights Council who refused to accept my complaint because “the Act does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of age against people who are over 65.”

Since then I have been repeatedly advised that legislation to change this provision is in the works. Recently, 30 July 2001, I attempted to reopen the matter and was again refused a hearing. The letter from Laurie Taylor, complaints analyst, offers this explanation: “…the BC Human Rights Code (enacted in January 1997) has not been amended to include age as a ground covered under section 8 of the Code, nor in changing the definition of age as it related to section 13, employment discrimination. Age is defined as ‘meaning an age of 19 years or more and less than 65.’”

The College, it seems, is entitled, by law, to discriminate against older doctors on the basis of their age. While there is general agreement that this is inequitable and promises to change the law have been floating around these last 9 years, nothing has happened.

It seems to me the BC Medical Association has an obligation to its senior members to do everything it can to protect them from this abuse; I put it to them it is past time they did something.

—Thomas P. Millar, MD 
Vancouver

Thomas P. Millar, MD. Age discrimination. BCMJ, Vol. 43, No. 10, December, 2001, Page(s) 551 - Letters.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply