Now here's a thing. When I founded brainstrust I had no idea of the wild and wonderful things it would get me into. The latest was an invitation by Channel 4 to spend a 'late' evening at the Wellcome Trust in London, watching Paul Grundy, consultant neurosurgoen and one of brainstrust's patrons, perform an awake craniotomy live on TV. It was actually OK - the only bit I couldn't watch was when he lifted the skull away from the dura. It was very informative and the fact that the audience (live and TV) could interact with the process through email, phone and twitter, made it accessible to all. It was sensitively handled, the patient and fanily had agreed to the filming and if things had gone wrong then filming would have stopped.

So I was surprised to read the backlash from this series. Criticisms ran rife about reality TV and how inappropriate this was. Surely the more you know about a situation the better prepared you can be to deal with it? I know that when both my daughter and myself were faced with cancer I wanted to know what the options were, so that we could make our own choices. And I am glad we did; Meg wouldn't have been here now if we hadn't. I believe in looking the tiger in the eye and the more information we have the better. You don't have to watch this stuff. There is an off button. It's about choice. I have a right to watch this; you have a right not to. But it isn't right to deny someone the option of being informed. What do you think?