With much regret we have to inform you that Remedy is no longer able to exist as an organisation.

After five years of campaigns, direct action, courtroom battles and the occasional march we are unable to sustain the management and leadership that an effective Remedy needs. We have therefore decided to close with immediate effect.

We are immensely proud of everything that our small committee and 12,000 supporters have managed to to achieve during this time. Remedy was about providing the legitimacy and security to passionate medics who wanted to challenge the views of the establishment.

After we have wound up the company and paid outstanding legal and other fees we will be left with just under £2,000 in the bank.

We will be donating this to the Royal Medical Benevolent fund (as was stated in our constitution) later in the year. This website will continue - possibly as a blog.

Thank you to all of you who have supported us.

Matt Mat and Richard.

It is hard to find anyone who seriously believes that cancelling a few out-patient clinics and some elective operations will cause the government to change its mind over Doctor’s pensions. Losing a few operating lists might cause some inconvenience to a few Trusts, and a few patients will probably suffer unnecessarily as a consequence, but it doesn’t seem likely that this will translate into hard cash.

But going on strike will not just be ineffective, it will be positively harmful. Striking over changes to our pay would undermine everything that it means to be a professional. It would demean us in the eyes of the public and, at a time of recession and general economic uncertainty, it would portrays us as avaricious and greedy.

Medicine is a profession. Members of the public expect doctors to remain in an ethically appropriate manner, and to place altruism ahead of self-interest.  So can it be morally right for doctors to strike? It might be that there are some issues where the needs of the greater patient population outweigh the needs of any individual patient. But the pay and conditions of doctors is not such an issue. The right of doctors to earn a good wage is not on the same moral plane as the public’s right to have health care when they are ill.

Yet still there are leaders who think that ‘something must be done’, in order that we can demonstrate to the world that we are very cross about our pensions. The something-must-be-done brigade has been responsible for great harm over the years, and has produced all manner of iatrogenic problems, over-treatments and over-regulation throughout medicine and other walks of life. They have to learn that sometimes something must not be done. Sometimes it is better to sit there and do nothing.

Of course the proposed cuts in pensions are unwelcome. Junior doctors, who have a careers-worth of time to plan ahead, might be less affected than their more senior colleagues who might have left it too late to make alternative arrangements. But all of that is beside the point. The real question is whether or not industrial action will change the governments mind, and whether it is morally justifiable. Or is it just futile posturing?

Going on strike will do the medical profession incredible harm. Doctors must vote an overwhelming NO to it.