Steve Jobs died early due to his belief in "alternative" medicine
 

I have a problem with the phrase "died early" He died when he was supposed to die. His life and what he did with it was his choice. Thank "dog" we have a choice. My sister had breast cancer she is cancer free, but has told me over and over she would never do chemo again.

It's impossible to know the specifics of his case. The top commenter on that article implies that Jobs' cancer would have been easily removable with surgery; and if that's the case I can't say I personally understand his desire not to undergo the procedure. On the other hand, if Jobs was told that chemo and radiation were an inherently necessary part of treatment, or that his chances of survival after treatment were not as high as that guy says they could have been, then I can see the decision being much more nuanced.

My own uncle chose not to undergo chemo/radiation when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Not because he was against conventional medicine--he understood that he would die, but having watched his mother go through chemo for the same type of cancer, he simply decided he was not interested in that level of suffering.

Well .... dying is an alternative.

No, dying is not. When is an alternative.

I thought the saying went "Death is the alternative; but, when is an option."

I would never do chemo again.

surgery? hell yes. I love pre-op and post-op meds. :D

I have a problem with the phrase "died suddenly".

[Some comedian]We all die "suddenly". You're alive, you're alive, you're alive, ANDTHENYOU'REDEAD!!![/Some comedian]

I don't blame Jobs for turning to alternative medicine. Mainstream treatments have almost nothing to offer pancreatic cancer sufferers. Here's what one pancreatic cancer site has to say.

Wikipedia says the same thing, BTW - just with more scientific jargon.

So, if I were old Steve, I'd let modern medicine give it a shot, but if the treatment wasn't working (which it probably wasn't), why not experiment with alternative medicine?

I for one would not want to be kept alive for months, wracked with pain and getting weaker everyday and waiting for my inevitable death.

Yeah, maybe he died a little sooner, but he also had to endure less protracted suffering.

Well, if you read the link in the original post, he supposedly had a special kind of pancreatic cancer that was much more benign and survivable than most pancreatic cancers, but only with treatment that he didn't seek.

I heard Farrah Fawcett refused chemo and did some weird treatment in Germany to treat her rectal cancer. She'd fly over there for it - and the docs over there seemed very encouraging and hopeful. right up until she died.

Unless I've misread the article, he did the opposite. He went straight for the alternative therapies and only went for mainstream treatment afterwards, by which time it had progresed beyond the easily treated cancer that they were talking about.


There is a real problem with people turning to faith healers and/or unproven (even unprovable in some cases) alternative therapies as a first step.

It's understandable. Cancer and its treatment are scary shit. Mainstream medicine doesn't always work, is often arduous, painful and upsetting, and every one of us most likely has a horror story in mind of a relative or friend who went all through the nightmare to no avail.

All blame in this area should be reserved for the charlatans who offer hope and dangle a cure when in fact they're not providing anything of the sort.

Personally I think the phrase 'alternative medicine' should be taken out of the language, put up against a wall and shot 10 times. 'Unproven medicine' is more accurate. As Tim Minchin says: y'know what they call alternative medicine that's been proven to work? Medicine.

Thanks, Dana. I did indeed skip right over the article and hadn't read it before I made my post. This thread makes much more sense now.

Farrah didn't refuse chemo, she went through it. The treatment in Germany were treatments that weren't approved in the the US. I think these treatments were a last resort for her. Suzanne Somers I believe is one who refused chemo. She also stated that chemo is what killed Patrick Swayze. I don't believe that because I feel every case is different and should be treated as such.

It was a choice he made. He was a pretty smart guy. Many people seek to have no treatment. That is also a choice. We have to respect that.