Clinical and basic pharmacology share much common ground – unsurprisingly so, in view of the common ancestries of humans, other mammals, and more primitive life forms. There are also, however, important differences. Some of these relate to cultural differences between clinical and basic pharmacologists, and such barriers are best broken down: pharmacologists are much more influential if they speak with one voice. In this spirit, the clinical specialty in the UK is represented by the clinical section of the British Pharmacological Society (BPS – the owner of this journal as well as of the British Journal of Pharmacology (BJP) and of Pharmacology Matters) as its specialist society, and national meetings of the clinical section occur during a scientific meeting of the BPS (in recent years, the winter meeting). Clinical pharmacologists pull their weight in the Society and are recognised accordingly: for example, Jeff Aronson is currently President of the BPS and Colin Dollery was the 2007 winner of the Wellcome Gold Medal of the Society. There are, however, real (as well as cultural) differences between these branches of the discipline, and this editorial view comments on some of these. We plan to revisit the relationship between clinical and basic pharmacology more formally soon (see below).