I heard it was pancreas cancer - that proves money can't buy good health!
Originally Posted by vicinms
Maybe. However, Steve fucked himself over as well:
Most pancreatic cancers are aggressive and always terminal, but Steve was lucky (if you can call it that) and had a rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which is actually quite treatable with excellent survival rates — if caught soon enough. The median survival is about a decade, but it depends on how soon it’s removed surgically. Steve caught his very early, and should have expected to survive much longer than a decade. Unfortunately Steve relied on a diet instead of early surgery. There is no evidence that diet has any effect on islet cell carcinoma. As he dieted for nine months, the tumor progressed, and took him from the high end to the low end of the survival rate.
Why did he do this? Well, outsiders like us can’t know; but many who avoid medical treatment in favor of unproven alternatives do so because they’ve been given bad information, without the tools or expertise to discriminate good from bad. Steve was exposed to such bad information, as are we all.
Eventually it became clear to all involved that his alternative therapy wasn’t working, and from then on, by all accounts, Steve aggressively threw money at the best that medical science could offer. But it was too late. He had a Whipple procedure. He had a liver transplant. And then he died, all too young.
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2011/10/05/...ating-illness/
I read somewhere in passing that Jobs's distrust of conventional medicine stemmed from his Buddhist religious beliefs. I have no way of knowing if that's true or false; it's just one potential explanation for why he took the course of action he did.
He may have been a genius in some areas, but when it came to his health he was incredibly stupid. Sadly.
Cheers,
bcg