If you check his website at http://hintjens.com/ http://hintjens.com/ you'll see "In April 2016 he was diagnosed with terminal metastasis of a previous cancer".

If you check his website at http://hintjens.com/ http://hintjens.com/ you'll see "In April 2016 he was diagnosed with terminal metastasis of a previous cancer". So his choice was that or further suffering to the same end result.