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An old ethical principle holds that we ought not speak ill of the dead. After all, they can’t defend themselves. That rule is getting kicked around quite a bit just a week after the death of Steve Jobs.
Tabloids and bloggers, citing cancer experts who never treated Jobs and have no access to his medical information, are speculating that Jobs “doomed” himself with alternative medicine.
After Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003, he allegedly delayed surgery to remove the tumor -- the conventional treatment -- for nine months.
During that time, he also -- allegedly -- attempted treat his cancer with alternative medicine and diet, some news reports claim.
That choice, the headlines proclaim, may have cost him his life by letting his cancer grow and spread.
In a detailed post to Quora, an online forum popular among the Silicon Valley crowd, Harvard cancer doc Dr. Ramzi Amri wrote:
Let me cut to the chase: Mr. Jobs allegedly chose to undergo all sorts of alternative treatment options before opting for conventional medicine.
This was, of course, a freedom he had all the rights to take, but given the circumstances it seems sound to assume that Mr. Jobs' choice for alternative medicine could have led to an unnecessarily early death.
There are some major holes in this kind of speculation from Monday-morning medical analysts.
For one, reports that Jobs rejected mainstream medical advice after his diagnosis remain unconfirmed. Very few people know exactly what Jobs chose to do when he found out he had cancer. None of them are blogging.
Plus, Jobs lived eight years after his diagnosis with a neuroendocrine tumor. As MyHealthNewsDaily explained today, the average life expectancy for someone with a metastatic neuroendocrine tumor is about two years, according to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. (It’s unclear when Jobs cancer turned metastatic.)
It’s fair to assume that a person of his means and intelligence could access any and all expertise that existed to decide how best to try and fight his disease.
Beyond that, it just doesn’t do anybody any good to guess or gossip.
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The reason those nay sayers are nothing more than ignorant jerks, is most people do not live as long as he did with that diagnoses. Therefore quit the opposite is true!
This so-called gossip is complete nonsense. Anyone that has even the most basic understanding of pancreatic cancer knows that it is a death sentence, for most people their life expectancy is only around 6 months after diagnosis for stage 4 pancreatic cancer. That Jobs lasted as long as he did with this disease is testament to his doing everything possible and making all the right treatment decisions.
Please, really! So how about Patrick Swaze then? Almost the same age, did all the treatments, and still died much the same way. Medicine is overrated (thank you Hollywood), alternatives are mostly unproven myths and wives tales, religion is a wish on a star philosophy. The fact is we have a long way to go before we reach the point of coming up to being stupid. The only progress we seem to make is being able to disprove the last centuries belief in their definition of reality. Of course, it's much easier to disprove why something that was never real, was never real. It's quite another to be able to prove what is real. I especially love the videos of kids in New York dancing in sprayed DDT. They firmly believed that this would be good for them, thanks to politicians and doctors. You realize that in some parts of the world they were still doing this as late as 1995? Talk about slow communications.
Everything you think is real today, chances are your direct descendants will wonder how you were so incredibly stupid and ignorant and actually able to work a vehicular vehicle and live past 20.
From someone who knows a little somethin' about this disease: The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is never good; Jobs' form was the one that offers the longest period of survival while some pancreatic cancer can offer only a few months, at best a year; once tumors appear elsewhere, the battle intensifies and becomes more complicated; once tumors appear in the brain stem, the end is very near and surgery is not an option; chemotherapy treatments have not proven effective in pancreatic cancer although some studies are currently showing some hope; surgery on the pancreas, even in the earliest stages of diagnosis, is not always effective especially if the disease has already spread to other abdominal areas and even so the recovery is harsh, often exceeding the period of survival.
Jobs experienced a quality of life for a longer period than most diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was able to work, write a book, and enjoy his family life up until the last months of his disease. I hope his family finds peace, healing and fond memories of their years together.
This is very upsetting to me and I didn't even know him. He clearly did everything RIGHT to have extended his life for 8 years with such a dire diagnosis. He might even be something of an anomaly to have survived 8 years with pancreatic cancer. Michael Landon lived 2 months, and it's been something like 18 or 20 years since he died. Patrick Swayze managed an extra, what, barely 2 years to be with his wife and family, so whatever Steve Jobs was doing it was obviously the best thing. Anyone suggesting otherwise can suck it! They have no idea what they're talking about.
If It does nobody any good to guess or gossip, then why is NBC an MSN spreading the gossip under the pretense of being news?
Oh, I don't believe that NBC, and/or MSN were spreading gossip, per se......but I do take the tack that they [collectively] were just commenting [summarizing, if you will] on many of the continuing blogs that have surfaced since Jobs died. It's inevitable [the blogs], it's human nature, at a lower level. It is what it is, regardless of it's base nature.... and Yes, I suppose that "sleazy" would certainly fit [again, about the blogs]. Where NBC, and MSC are concerned...... it's "news", since folks are still dealing with his death....and most likely, it will continue for some time. All things said, and done....... many folks will still continue be the "gossipers", and the "guesser", so just deal with it!!
Pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers and the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in America. About 44,000 people will be diagnosed and 37,000 people will die of pancreatic cancer in America this year. Each year about 2,500 rare cases of PNET pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer are diagnosed in America. PNET is a much less aggressive and slow growing type of pancreatic cancer, which is what Steve Jobs had. There are various treatments that can help slow this type of rare PNET cancer, and results can very from person to person. A persons health, age, past treatments and quality of life decisions play an important role in the type of treatment received. Privacy and medical decisions should be respected, regardless if it's a neighbor, celebrity or CEO.
The beef wasn't with Steve Jobs, but with alternative cancer treatments. That may be why the Head of the School had to speak out even though he knew nothing about: (a.) alternative cancer treatments and (b.) pancreatic cancer.
This kind of thinking reminds me of the Adventure of Harvard Medical School and Mark Vonnegut. Vonnegut, who had recently recovered on megavitamin therapy from a severe schizophrenic episode, entered it in his medical history despite schizophrenia being a reason to deny admission to the school. The school admitted him anyway, because he was well, meaning he wasn't schizophrenic, as the school knew schizophrenia was incurable. Dr. V now practices in upstate New York.