So, it's farewell to the only truly independent voice of dispensing doctors. The DDAJ is dead and may it rest in peace.

In its life the Journal passed through many changes. The first twelve years, during the life-time of the original DDA were a period of great stability.

Those as long in the tooth as myself will recall its first edition, as an A5 parish magazine reporting the turbulent events following the Inaugural Conference in 1984. That and a few later subsequent editions - all by then A4 - were edited by that very good friend to dispensing doctors, Dr "Shom" Sil. It paid its way largely thanks to ICI.

After two or three editions Shom passed the editorial baton to me and I was enormously helped by an Advertising Agent, Iain McGhie. For the following 10-11 years Iain worked like a trojan on behalf of dispensing doctors and the DDA Journal. Throughout difficult times for advertising Iain always made the Journal pay and got it out on time and, furthermore, it became a full-colour glossy magazine.

Those were great days.

Iain's reward for all his hard work was to be threatened with a legal action by what are now the DDA Ltd. There was no case to answer, of course, and no more was heard of it but it saddened me that the DDA had fallen into such hands. I seem to recall that at that time threats of writs flew from that direction like confetti at a wedding.

During those 12 years dispensing was prominently in the news and the Journal was a vigorously campaigning magazine. I was told it was required reading at all FPC, HAs and even in Parliamentary circles. Certainly they all received it and Kenneth Clarke, as Health Minister, quoted extensively from it in the House during the earlier GP contract debate. He was not complimentary!

Then, some years later, the dissident DDA committee members who broke away to form the present DDA Ltd, threw a legal ban on the Journal so that it could not discuss the internal crisis within the organisation. Members remained in some compulsory ignorance.

From that day until it ceased publication it never campaigned for dispensing practice again. It became an undistinguished, but highly expensively produced bland magazine. That, of course, was inevitable as the Association it represented had lost its fire and its way.

The final few editions were passed over to the commercial Haymarket Press. God knows why the DDA Ltd committed this folly. Maybe it was incompetence. It was certainly thoughtless.

Predictably, Haymarket, not having the obsession and enthusiam in dispensing practice as Shom, Iain and myself, have announced its closure. Presumably, even with a membership subscription of over a £100, the DDA Ltd can no longer afford to produce it. Some member may like to ask them why!

DDA Ltd members have been assured, on the DDA Ltd company web-site, that there will be a weekly page devoted to dispensing in "GP" newspaper.

My prediction is that that will be so for several weeks, then it will drop to half a page and finally become a list of fees and statistics in Medeconomics before dispensing disappears from the mainstream completely.

Never again will any dispensing doctor be able to send a piece to the DDAJ on any subject, confident that it will be published. Another light of democracy has been extinguished.

What folly of the DDA Ltd. What stupidity!

What do you get for your £100 or so, these days?

DDAJ - rest in peace.

David

(19/10/07)