Guardian -- In Joanna Moorhead’s article about the increasing provision of over-the-counter medicines from pharmacies, Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, is reported as saying that “a pharmacist makes their profit selling over-the-counter medicines whereas your GP has no pecuniary benefit in giving you medicine” (Shelf medication, 2 June). This is misleading, and typical of an article that characterises pharmacists as profit-seekers, Whitehall as miserly and GPs’ organisations as bastions of moral rectitude. Your report gave far more space to GPs’ organisations than to pharmacy, and the patient’s voice was absent.
