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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

Could've saved Iain M Banks :(

Steve Jobs tried to cure his pancreatic cancer with diet for 6 months. This might have given him more direction.

Pancreatic cancer has taken quite a few famous people:

    Randy Pausch - Last Lecture
    Steve Jobs
    Patrick Swayze
    Sally Ride - astronaut
    Piers Sellers - astronaut 
    Hans Rosling
    Richard Hatch
    Bill Hicks - Comedian
    Jef Raskin - Macintosh 
    Iain M Banks - Author

In the 12 years since Randy’s Last Lecture, we’ve made little progress:

https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/

Steve Jobs had one of the mildest, non-aggressive forms of pancreatic cancer; had he taken chemo, he would be 99% here today. Instead he let it grow until there was no hope anymore. Fruitarian diet seems like the worst possible one for pancreas...

I guess that's the downside of a contrarian "Think different" mindset.

Sometimes if you "zig" while the whole world "zags", you build the biggest company in the world. And sometimes you die from very treatable cancer.

Another famous person currently fighting it is Alex Trebek. Stage IV. And sadly, he just had a relapse.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Satoru Iwata or Satoshi Kon yet. Both were fairly high-profile losses because of their reputations and how suddenly they left us. Kon's farewell letter was also somewhat remarkable because of the Japanese taboo, at the time, of speaking about cancer: https://www.makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words

You're right. And thank you for that link.

Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, Aretha Franklin, Pavarotti, Sharon Jones, Alan Rickman, Dizzie Gillespie, Patrick Swayze, Benoit Mandelbrot, Wernher von Braun, John von Neumann...

I hope they lick this thing along with so many other forms of this that just destroy quality of life.

RBG is still alive...

Indeed! Originally had a few other folks on that list (Trebek, my mom) that were alive and forgot to remove RBG. Please forgive my error.

Iain (M) Banks died of gall bladder cancer that had spread to his pancreas and liver [1]. This research concerns cancer that originates in the pancreas, so I don't think it would have helped him.

Still my favourite author. Six years. Hard to believe.

[1] https://www.iain-banks.net/2013/04/03/a-personal-statement-f...

I thought he sublimed with the rest of the Gzilt?

What an amazing author.

Didn't Jobs have the same?

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