Some of you may have seen 60 Minutes on Sunday evening. It featured the story of ‘Patient 71″, a woman named Julie Randall who was diagnosed aged 50 with metastatic melanoma. She found a place on a US clinical trial and is now in excellent health. There is much that is great about her story. She was very much her own advocate and aggressively sought out treatment options. But the rhetoric around the story was less than great.

The 60 Minutes Story ran a very strong line that Julie refused to die and leave her teenage children. As if it is really a choice. I now know far too many mothers and fathers who have died leaving children much younger than Julie’s. Not one of them wanted to leave their children. I suppose I shouldn’t expect much more of 60 Minutes than the trite and cliched. And yet it annoyed…