Today’s NHS would have seemed like science fiction to my generation of medical graduates, thanks to the enormous advances in technology and pharmacology that allow more and more of us to live well into old age and that can either cure diseases that were once fatal or turn them into long-term conditions, as is now the case with many forms of cancer. In my own family alone, my son has lived with a transplanted liver for more than 20 years, my daughter has had IVF and I have a new hip, all of which were unimaginable when I left medical school.