Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

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> According to Jobs's biographer, Walter Isaacson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer – a decision he later regretted as his health declined". "Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies, and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He was also influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004." He eventually underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004, that appeared to remove the tumor successfully.[175][176]

> Jobs did not receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

> Jobs died at his Palo Alto, California, home around 3 p.m. (PDT) on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated islet-cell pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which resulted in respiratory arrest.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs

It isn't stupidity that makes people not believe in medical science. Jobs wasn't stupid. It's some kind of hubris and mistrust. The belief that I know better than an entire community of professionals who have dedicated their lives to knowing these answers. Why, what if actual the answer is the one I want to hear instead of the difficult path?

It's more than hubris and mistrust. The moment they inject you with radiation to stage you as you begin the process of treatment is rather illuminating.

Hearing that Geiger counter tick behind you. Hearing it start screaming as the nurse arrives with a lead hypodermic containing radioactive sugar.

Seeing her approach your arm with that fucking thing.

Watching as the needle approaches your vein, about to puncture the skin.

Freeze frame right there. Now let's consider that moment. You have a decision to make. Will you let them do something that will harm you to try to cure you? That is a difficult decision for most people. It requires a tremendous leap of faith. It is equivalent to being awake as they're about to saw off a limb to save your life from a gangrenous infection.

Cancer treatment has many of these moments. Every time you're infused with doxorubicin and vincristine each chemo cycle is another of these moments.

Deciding to let someone hurt you badly to try to save your life goes against our primal instinct and takes a tremendous amount of rational will to overcome that resistance.

Being treated for cancer and choosing a treatment path isnt an impassive collegial debate in a HN thread. It is a visceral experience that results in complete submission to a terrifying process that involves cutting and poisoning your body. In many cases the treatment is very effective. But alternatives begin to look pretty fucking good as you start down that path.

I see examples of this all of the time especially amongst people who are successful or highly advanced in any sort of facet of life. My theory is that becoming advanced involves developing deep analytical skills, which it’s then tempting to apply to all sorts of other domains. The trap is that what made you advanced in one specialized area was years of foundational knowledge alongside those analytical skills. I find myself fighting that impulse a lot and have gotten better but I can easily see it going the other direction.

People like Jobs are successful because they go against the mainstream and do what they think is right even if everybody else disagrees. And they are very stubborn. It’s not surprising that they have the same mindset in other areas of life. This kind of arrogance and stubbornness makes them successful but can also be their downfall.

It speaks to the fact that cancer treatment is almost as scary as cancer itself.

Faced with the choice of poisoning your body to spite your cells, having a chunk of your organs lopped off, or just letting it ride... Hindsight is 20:20, maybe his decision was a mistake, but I have sympathy for Jobs here.

That kind of hubris is a form of stupidity.

> Jobs wasn't stupid.

I think all of above indicates the opposite.

People easily influenced by the loonie culture are not the same sort of people who bought into snake oil treatment for them not knowing it.

People from more well off countries don't have the same mental "immune system" than people coming from places with fraud on every corner.

I think it is very appropriate to call stupid people stupid, and confront stupidity.

In fairness to Jobs, he would have known that the surgery was very invasive, came with significant side effects that would reduce his quality of life, while probably only buying time for a disease that would likely end up being terminal.

A difficult decision for anyone, no matter how rationally you look at it.

because they see the doctor and the medical system as something not personal and interacting with them..

my father(age close top 80) is doing this now in the sense he wants to jump on any not proven thing for dialysis even though its not proven. I constantly force him to interact more with his doctors and nurses to counteract these things. Sometimes it works sometimes not.

I feel sorry for your father. Dialysis is not fun, this is not irrational behavior, it's pain avoidance. My grandfather used to call me when he was going through dialysis - sometimes crying. It was heartbreaking.

Jobs didn’t disbelieve medical science. It’s possible to reject a treatment for other reasons.

Don’t just leave us hanging! Would you mind listing some possible reasons to reject cancer treatment in favor of pseudoscience?

Walter Isaacson quoted Steve Jobs as giving this reason:

"I didn't want my body to be opened... I didn't want to be violated in that way."

It's still not a good reason to avoid surgery, but it's also not a rejection of medical science.

I have talked to cancer patients and treatment really violates people. You go through endless tests, get treatments with horrific side effects and basically are just treated like an object. I have heard several times that they wanted to stop treatment just because it was such a terrible experience physically and psychologically. Not sure how to do better but it’s understandable.

It's a real pickle for practitioners, that is why consent is a HUGE deal with the medical field.

ICU Psychosis is a 'good' example of what kinds of things can happen with patients undergoing lifesaving treatment.

https://www.medicinenet.com/icu_psychosis/article.htm

Here is a story about undergoing ICU Psychosis: https://icupsychosis.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-own-story.html

Even in countries that have functional medical systems, medical treatment can be very de-humanizing. It's not something that may every go away, as medical practice fundamentally clashes with most people's idea of selfhood.

Plenty of people have opted out of the horrors of chemotherapy, choosing to die at home in relative comfort.

Not paying exorbitant fees to pump poison in your body that makes you wish you were dead anyway. Not giving your family false hope that you will get better while looking like a stepped-on prune. The humiliation of trying experimental, unproven treatments.

At least with witch doctors, you'll keep your family somewhat calm and won't take a toll on your wallet. More inheritance for them.

It's some kind of hubris and mistrust.

The word you're looking for is arrogance.

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