BCMA Board Chair responds

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 54, No. 5, June 2012, Page 230 Letters
By: Carole Williams, MD,

The job of the Board of Directors is first and foremost to conduct its business with the best interests of the membership at its core. A large part of that includes reviewing submissions from members on a vast array of topics—including bylaw amendments. 

The Board, like any representative body, looks at all submissions, recommendations, and suggestions it re­ceives and makes a decision as to their merit. If the Board determines that the submission is not in the best interests of the membership, then it does what it was elected to do, and rejects it. That is what happened with this proposed bylaw amendment. 

Although the BCMA is required under the bylaws to send a member’s proposal out for referendum if it meets legal requirements, the Board is well within its rights to include its opinion of it. The Board is under no requirement to also include the authors’ perspective. It is the authors’ responsibility to notify the membership as to the proposed amendment’s perceived merits—and indeed the authors quite ably did just that. 

As your letter states, you support the opinions of the people elected to represent you and who know more about the issues. That is the way it should be. And that is what happened here.
—Carole Williams, MD
Acting Chair of the Board

Carole Williams, MD,. BCMA Board Chair responds. BCMJ, Vol. 54, No. 5, June, 2012, Page(s) 230 - 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.

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