Following the death last month of his wife Jane, from breast cancer at the age of 43, Mike Tomlinson paid tribute to her courageous 7 years of sporting achievements and campaigning, saying that this could help to ‘redefine what it means to be a cancer patient’. Jane Tomlinson's marathons, triathlons, and long-distance bicycle rides were extraordinary achievements for somebody undergoing treatment for disseminated breast cancer. Yet, while extending sympathies to her husband and three children, I am doubtful whether Jane Tomlinson provides a role model that we should commend to patients with cancer.
Far from representing a new and enlightened approach towards cancer, the Tomlinson story of defying her prognosis (she was ‘given 6 months to live’ in August 2000) through exertion revives the 19th-century concept that disease can be challenged by will. This notion …