8degreesoflatitude

After the announcement last week of Angelina Jolie’s ‘decision’ to remove her healthy breasts because of medical advice, and the trillion-dollar industry that is benefiting from her influence, I decided to publish a little story from Sydney in 2003, when I was told I was terminally ill and would never walk again… in support of all those frightened into medical dependence.

St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, Australia. Office of Dr S. Brite, Immunology: He clearly had an ironing lady, and had not done anything all morning to disturb the post-colonial violence of his immaculate pin-striped business shirt.

Even though he was a man who dealt, every half hour, with the agonies of the people he was assisting to die …slowly. And even though it was February, in Australia.

Against the deleterious drab of his office, so vividly just one brick wall away from the baking sheet of the Sydney summer…