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60 Minutes: Sept 11

"You can't make a father watch his daughter die."

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“You can’t make a father watch his daughter die.”

This Sunday on 60 Minutes is the contentious topic of cannabis as a medicine with time running out for one four year old with Dravet Syndrome.

The Gift
Barry and Joy Lambert are Australia’s most generous grandparents. From humble beginnings, and after a lifetime of hard work, they’ve done very well for themselves and are now multi-millionaires. But they’ve also endured some tough times, most recently with their four-year-old granddaughter, Katelyn. She suffers from a life-threatening form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome and the only treatment that seems to help control her devastating seizures is medicinal cannabis. But obtaining the drug, and giving it to Katelyn, is mired in legal and logistical bureaucracy. As well, there are ethical issues about using cannabis as a medicine, and an urgent need for more research into how it works and its efficacy. But with time running out for Katelyn, Barry and Joy decided they had to do something to help, and in one of the largest private donations in Australian history, wrote a cheque to the University of Sydney for $34 million. Scientists now hope to use their gift to develop treatments for paediatric epilepsy, dementia and pain.
Reporter: Allison Langdon
Producer: Ali Smith, Nick Greenaway

Taking the Plunge
Some people call cliff-diving a sport. Others say it’s sheer madness. Either way, jumping more than 20 metres off a rock ledge, trying to be graceful as you somersault into the water at 80 kilometres an hour, is spectacular. And incredibly dangerous. Just two months ago Australian Rhiannan Iffland took up cliff-diving and literally, from her first jump, stunned her more experienced competition by beating them. Tara Brown joined the 24-year-old daredevil with nerves of steel and her understandably nervous parents in Italy for her latest vertigo-inducing contest.
Reporter: Tara Brown
Producer: Garry McNab

No Surrender
Despite all the years of telling you he’s Charles Wooley, he hasn’t been entirely truthful. That’s because he’s really a MacGregor, a proud member of the infamous warrior clan from the Scottish Highlands. For centuries the MacGregors have been bravely – and it must be said mostly unsuccessfully – fighting to save Scotland from the hands of the English. So when Charles was invited to attend a clan gathering he thought it would be a chance to immerse himself in the romance of his ancestral family tree. What he found though was a much darker and unexpected history.
Reporter: Charles Wooley
Producer: Laura Sparkes

8:30pm Sunday on Nine.

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