A GMC election was due in 1971. The elections had usually been a formality. The BMA nominated medical politicians nearing retirement, 'old political warhorses put out to grass', and they were returned, often unopposed. In 1971 O’Donnell and two leading members of the JHDA stood as candidates and were elected. The medical newspaper "Pulse" commented 'If this was anyone’s election, it was Michael O’Donnell’s for the issues were the ones to which he first drew attention in "World Medicine" and continued to press with a relentlessness which drew strictures in Presidential addresses.'