[troutman]

Harvard Cancer Expert: Steve Jobs Probably Doomed Himself With Alternative Medicine

http://gawker.com/5849543/harvard-ca...ative-medicine

Steve Jobs had a mild form of cancer that is not usually fatal, but seems to have ushered along his own death by delaying conventional treatment in favor of alternative remedies, a Harvard Medical School researcher and faculty member says. Jobs's intractability, so often his greatest asset, may have been his undoing.

"Let me cut to the chase: Mr. Jobs allegedly chose to undergo all sorts of alternative treatment options before opting for conventional medicine," Ramzi Amri wrote in an extraordinarily detailed post to Quora, an online Q&A forum popular among Silicon Valley executives. "Given the circumstances, it seems sound to assume that Mr. Jobs' choice for alternative medicine has eventually led to an unnecessarily early death."

Steve Jobs’ cancer and pushing the limits of science-based medicine
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/...of-steve-jobs/

So, is it possible, even likely, that Jobs compromised his chances of survival? Yes. Is it definite that he did? No, it’s not, at least it’s not anywhere as definite as Dunning makes it sound. In fact, based on statistics alone, it’s unlikely that a mere nine months took Jobs “from the high end to the low end of the survival rate,” as Dunning puts it.

I have no doubt that Jobs might well have compromised his chances of survival by delaying, but it’s just not scientifically supportable to leap to the conclusion, as Dunning does, that he compromised his chances so much that “alternative medicine killed him.” What is known about Jobs’s case and insulinomas do not support such a conclusion; at worst they support a conclusion that Jobs might have decreased his chances somewhat.