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Ripping yarn

A Christmas card this year from a former school of pharmacy friend told me about a novel written by another alumnus €“ Garth Gunston. Through the good offices of Amazon, I was able to enjoy 'The Tissue Trail' (Old Line Publishing) over the seasonal break. And what a ripping yarn it turned out to be. The plot is built around the arrest of young western women for allegedly smuggling narcotics into Singapore, where this absolute offence carries the death penalty.

It features a beautiful young pharmacist heroine, clinical trial trouble-shooting, secretive Swiss bankers, a massive international conspiracy involving the Chinese and conniving Canadians, death defying flights through windswept gorges, traditional yak caravans and the manufacture and use of drugs. It seems that Garth learnt rather more chemistry and pharmacology as a student than I would ever have given him credit for; he and I spent rather more time than perhaps we should have done on things like being the president of the students' union (him) and editing the student newspaper (me).

He used to write a column for that paper (Our Column) devoted to perspicacious observations on student life €“ a bit like 'An Onlooker's Notebook', but about student life rather than the profession. He was a good read then. He is an even better read now.

Wot, no honours?

A search of the New Year Honours list for things pharmaceutical only comes up with one name, Dr Robert Hardy, chief executive of Aesica Pharmaceuticals Ltd. He, however, is a chemist. So the profession draws a blank, again!

Memories

As I found my seat in the Olivier auditorium at the National Theatre in London recently, I recalled that I had been in the same place many moons ago for a special general meeting of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Despite the compelling nature of the play (Behind the Beautiful Forevers), I tried to remember what all the fuss had been about back then. One of those behind the calling of the SGM had been John Davies, who was secretary of the Rural Pharmacists' Association, which had been set up to counter the ambitions of the dispensing doctors.

Anything that weakened the pharmacist's position against the despised enemy would be intolerable. And something that was perceived as doing just that was a proposal from the RPSGB Council that it should not be necessary for pharmacists to check repeat prescriptions after they had been dispensed. The pharmacy case against dispensing doctors was that there was no qualified supervision of their dispensaries, and John Davies undoubtedly envisaged the dispensing doctors developing a 'pot calling the kettle black' type of argument, though he did not express his opposition in such explicit terms but wrapped it up in general concerns for public safety.

Embarrassingly for the then Council, the 'final checkers' won the day and succeeded in getting a 'no confidence in the Council' motion through. That was all back in 1989. The issue of supervision has still not been settled, it being one of the items under consideration by the Department of Health's 'rebalancing of medicines legislation' programme. That's the thing about pharmacy: it takes ages to sort things out.

Bull's-eye

It is great to see my old mate Raj Patel proudly standing alongside Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt in a picture in the January/February issue of inpharmacy, the NPA's journal. Raj was the first winner of our Advocate of the Year Award and is tireless in his endeavours to promote the profession. I reckon he hit the bull's- eye in getting Jeremy Hunt to visit his pharmacy in South London. According to the report, Mr Hunt had an NHS Health Check during his visit. In the interest of professional confidentiality, we are not told the result, but the Secretary of State looks OK to me. Let's hope he was receptive to what he was told about the NHS minor ailments scheme and gets behind the idea of rolling it out nationwide.