"World Medicine" attracted a large and intensely loyal readership but in 1982, after a dispute with the publishers over editorial policy, O'Donnell was forced to leave. The senior editorial staff resigned in sympathy and ‘most of his more talented contributors stopped writing for the magazine in a rare demonstration of self-sacrificial sympathy and protest.’ The publication folded two years later. With a new editor and new staff, it lacked, according to Paul Vaughan, 'the mercurial wit and verve that were O’Donnell’s trademark.'