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The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7325 p713-714
13 November 2004

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Letters to the Editor

The Journal

PJ should be free from “dead hand” of Lambeth

From Mr D. J. Willcocks, MRPharmS

Your pages are full of change and reform. The one great reform I would like to see is the freeing of The Pharmaceutical Journal from its official link with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

At the present, the only good thing to come out of Lambeth is the PJ. It is essential reading, absolutely crammed with the information we need to practise pharmacy. The one glaring exception is in the reporting of the doings of the Council and officers of the Society. In this instance, we readers, members of the Society for the most part, are in much the same position as the old Kremlin watchers in pre-glasnost Russia.

What, for example, are we supposed to make of the recent letter of Peter Curphey (PJ, 16 October, p559) lambasting his erstwhile colleague Sid Dajani (PJ, 9 October, p559)? Is this a difference of emphasis, a personal feud or the sign of a massive schism in the leadership of our Society? Which one is headed for the Politburo, which one to the Gulag?

You run an excellent publication, not a bit like Pravda, but freed of the dead hand of the Lambeth establishment and given real editorial control, I am sure you could do a lot more to let the bewildered membership know what is really happening.

David J. Willcocks
Newport, Gwent

The “dead hand of the Lambeth establishment” controlling The Journal is more in the mind of Mr Willcocks than in reality. The Journal, like every other independent publication, has to be aware of the sensitivities of its publisher, which may make us pay more attention to certain issues. Nevertheless, we are free to publish whatever we want, and not publish what we do not want. The coverage of Society matters (including the Council’s) would be far less comprehensive if The Journal were owned by another organisation. — EDITOR.

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