6 ms·

First, Steve's family asked us to respect their privacy. They never made his fight with cancer a public matter and it's terribly rude to speculate like this. Th

• Estragon 15y ago
  It depends on the type of cancer. For some classes of cancer, there are now treatments which dramatically improve the prognosis, with relatively mild side-effects. This is summarized well in the book The Emperor of Maladies. Pancreatic cancer is particularly intractable. The survival rate is extremely low. I don't blame him for trying everything. He had nothing to lose.
  • exit 15y ago
    i can agree that once the question becomes how you will die of cancer instead of whether, then gentler (perhaps "alternative") treatment may be acceptable. the issue here though is that some people reject conventional treatment from the very beginning.
  • noarchy 15y ago
    He had nothing to lose, perhaps, but maybe he did have something to lose if he was foregoing conventional treatments in favour of something that was of dubious efficacy. "If" is the key word, as I have no idea what was going on with regard to his very private (as was his right to be) medical treatments.
  • bryanlarsen 15y ago
    According to the article, most pancreatic cancers are intractable, but islet cell neuroendocrine tumors have excellent survival rates.
    • evgen 15y ago
      Compared to other forms of pancreatic cancer perhaps, but none of the 10-year survival rates for any of the pancreatic cancer variants I am familiar with is "excellent" no matter how you look at it. Given that Jobs lasted at least eight years after initial diagnosis it seems he was already on the upper end of the survival curve. Claiming, as Dunning did, that were it not for actions taken during the first months after diagnosis Steve Jobs would be alive today is a claim that Dunning is woefully unqualified to make.
  • hugh3 15y ago
    As I understand it (and I'm only going by what he said in his Stanford commencement speech here) he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer which is treatable: The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months... I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. Ouch.
    • mattgreenrocks 15y ago
      What about the possibility of remission?
      • hugh3 15y ago
        Well yeah, that's what happened afaik Whether the nine month delay before getting surgery increased the likelihood of remission is a question I'm not qualified to answer. But until contradicted by an oncologist I'm going to go with "probably".
• drzaiusapelord 15y ago
  >my honest impression is that for several forms of cancer the current state of "orthodox" treatment Unless you're a specialist with an expert opinion in islet cell carcinoma, your comment is 100% meaningless. Look, Steve was a human. He was flawed. He had a relationship with alternative medicine. He's not perfect. No one is. A lot of people give in to the woo for some many reasons. He was a billionaire, educated, had access to the world's experts, and known for his amazing horse-sense, yet he gave in. I like this story because Steve is so high profile. I can pull this out and mention it next time a friend considers these approaches instead of going to a real doctor.
  • Alex3917 15y ago
    "He had a relationship with alternative medicine." Naturopathy isn't really alternative medicine, although some of the schools do teach things from alternative medicine. For the most part it's just as evidence-based as anything else. The N.D. curriculum isn't all that much different than that of the average M.D. program: http://www.bridgeport.edu/academics/graduate/naturo/programreqs http://www.bridgeport.edu/academics/graduate/naturo/programr... The big exception being perhaps the 5 credits on homeopathy, which seems overkill to me, but then again the average M.D. doesn't learn nearly enough about homeopathy considering how important it was in popularizing evidence-based medicine and introducing all sorts of other reforms that have saved millions of lives over the past 150 years. (Even JAMA publicly credits homeopathy with introducing evidence-based medicine: http://bit.ly/qqU59B http://bit.ly/qqU59B)
    • burgerbrain 15y ago
      Dangerous misinformation. "Naturopathy, or Naturopathic Medicine, is a form of alternative medicine...." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturopathy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturopathy
      • Alex3917 15y ago
        Digital maoism.
• noarchy 15y ago
  Given that presumably none of us have Job's medical records (or the expertise to interpret them, in most cases), and known little about his treatments, I hesitate to speculate on his particular case. If it was the case that Jobs could've prolonged his life using conventional medicine, then it probably is relevant to those who are currently battling that kind of cancer. The choices that Jobs himself made are his own, regardless of what I might personally think about them. But for those who want to do everything possible to live, it helps to be aware of what works, versus what probably does not work.
• secretasiandan 15y ago
  According to the more in depth article linked to in exit's comment: 'There is virtually no debate about the best treatment. “It has long been held that surgery can lead to very long-term survival,” says Kim.' So this would not have been what your family has faced, and makes the criticism of alternative medicine valid.
• bad_user 15y ago
  With close family members having fought cancer more times than I can count on one hand Sorry for this question, but how did that happen? I'm asking because I know of nobody in my family to have had cancer. My grandpa did have a brain tumor diagnosed at age 80, but it was benign. Are you living in a polluted city? What are you eating? EDIT: I'm sorry if I offended with this question. The thing is I'm worried that I'm living in a polluted/crowded city, and hearing from others that cancer is really not that uncommon, it kind of makes me freak out ... not necessarily for me, but for my baby boy. Really, I just want to know what is to be done for prevention.
  • burgerbrain 15y ago
    Genes man. Genes.
    • glhaynes 15y ago
      Genes and chance.
  • kalleboo 15y ago
    Chance? Behavior? I've had 3 close relatives die from cancer (Grandpa, Grandpa, Grandma - Lung, Lung, Brain). Adding 3 more people to a list like that isn't far fetched. In developed countries - Cancer is a huge killer, worldwide - it kills 13% of people.
    • burgerbrain 15y ago
      Also note that the poster said close family members fought cancer a double-hand number of times. That could mean over 5 people, though it could also mean one or more family members had multiple run-ins with cancer, surviving at least the first few times. This is rather common in my personal experience.
• Artagra 15y ago
  It's a tough one. There are many people who fall into the group you describe, but there are also people for whom chemotherapy and radiation therapy has been very successful and allowed them to continue living a healthy, happy life.
• extension 15y ago
  First, Steve's family asked us to respect their privacy. They never made his fight with cancer a public matter and it's terribly rude to speculate like this. Discussing a possible injustice that may have cost him his life seems like a worthwhile reason to drag his name into the conversation. And though the individual ultimately has a right to privacy and choice over their own treatment, I worry that such politeness helps create the bubble in which misinformation can go without scrutiny. my honest impression is that for several forms of cancer the current state of "orthodox" treatment (typically chemotherapy and radiation) is a joke worth skipping in exchange for what quality of life you have left If you know of a better cancer treatment, then the scientific community eagerly awaits evidence of your discovery. If you think that current best practices do not act in the best interests of the patient, that too can be supported with evidence. There is no reason to conflate disruptive theories with abandoning rationality by pigeonholing scientific medicine into an orthodoxy. Skepticism and prejudice are easily confused. Skepticism is harder, but it's also correct.
• zeteo 15y ago
  We're talking about two separate issues here, and you're mixing them up. There's nothing in modern medicine that teaches you how to prepare for death, or how to balance an extra 1% chance of survival with the pain of chemo. Take comfort in philosophy, religion, go hold last lectures. But modern medicine can sure do a lot for some types of cancers that are caught in an early stage. There are lots of people out there who can benefit from this. These people are usually in a state of psychological vulnerability, and telling them anecdotes about how refusing chemo can turn out OK is about as nasty a thing as you can ever do to them.
  • nmcfarl 15y ago
    There is plenty of this in modern medicine, as a matter of fact my wife is on a palliative care rotation in Med School right now, and this is a major focus. However it must be said that it seems that this bit is considered very 'newfangled' and touchy-feely by much of the medical community.
  • mkr-hn 15y ago
    "There's nothing in modern medicine that teaches you how to prepare for death, or how to balance an extra 1% chance of survival with the pain of chemo. Take comfort in philosophy, religion, go hold last lectures." Sounds a lot like end of life counseling, which is part of modern medicine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-life_(medical_treatment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-life_(medical_treatment...
    • zeteo 15y ago
      That's "medications and treatments to control pain and other symptoms". It doesn't cover dealing with the philosophical issues.
      • mkr-hn 15y ago
        Read the rest of it. "Either way, services are available to help patients and their families with the medical, psychological, and spiritual issues surrounding dying." All that aside, the focus is on making the end of life comfortable, which would naturally involve that sort of thing. Modern medicine takes what works from traditional and otherwise, and counseling is part of it. There's a good saying: traditional medicine that works becomes modern medicine.
• Florin_Andrei 15y ago
  Careful now, this is a rapidly changing field. There are already treatments available today, that were not available the previous decade, with much less impact on overall well-being - and also better outcomes. I understand what you're saying - but what I'm saying is, just keep your eyes open.
• nollidge 15y ago
  > we'd rather die what we consider gracefully I assure you a death from many (most?) forms of cancer is anything but graceful, treated or not.