The life a GP used to be so simple. A patient would walk in, tell a tale of woe and misery, the antibiotic would be prescribed and all were happy. Some adventurous GP's would experiment with antibiotics having more poetic names. The odd Bolshevik or maladjusted doctor would prescribe something else entirely. Through the years, I've spoilt many pleasant evenings denouncing this bourgeois, complacent and utterly boring state of affairs. I must be a nihilist or solipsist or something.

But never in my wildest dreams did I doubt the prescription itself. One presses the buttons on the computer; a prescription is printed, signed and forgotten. I'd occasionally wake from my pharmacotherapeutic coma by news that a sizeable proportion of them never arrived at the pharmacy- however flowerful their names were!

Carnarvon's different. I started handwriting them in lieu of a computer. Checking dosages and package sizes in the MIMS. Walking a tightrope between illegibility and speed. A bit later I discovered that there was a Government incentive to provide free drugs to Aboriginals, and that our practice had a sizable stock of drugs. With only me being authorized to actually issue drugs, the prescriptions came back to haunt me. Nobody but me checks my prescriptions-which is clearly not foolproof. Besides, if I and a nurse or healthworker can do it, why do the pharmacists spend 6 years at university? Bit of a worry, really.

Although these free drugs are earmarked for the Aboriginal population, the letter of the law doesn't actually state this clearly for reasons evident. How does one define Aboriginal? By and large, it's not a problem. Exept in Carnarvon, where the AMS is open to, and used by all. At the moment, a patient gets seen sooner at the AMS than at the fee-charging GP in town. With our current job-sharing system, the odds are that they'd see the same doctor wherever they went.

And if people find out they can get free drugs too, what's there to prevent all of Carnarvon coming to the AMS? There's a pharmacy 300 metres from the AMS, where two actual pharmacists and their staff try to earn a living. They do our stock- taking, which must be similar to digging one's own grave. Also, I value the triple-checking my prescriptions get if they run through the pharmacy.

Personally, I feel that the poor and disadvantaged should get their drugs free. But if we can't means-test, or get into antropometry to define Aboriginalness- where's the line to be drawn? Should there be a line at all?

I offered a solution in the following form: a big poster in the waiting room proclaiming:

Somehow, this is not ethical. But I can't put my finger on the reason why.

Kees