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Comment by stonesthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

> last thing he destroyed was himself, by going the bonkers “alternative healing” route on cancer.

People who tend to go the "alternative healing" route usually do so because the traditional healing route hasn't worked.

> he had an out and he chose to ignore it till it was too late

Did he? Guess you are the expert.

Cancer treatment isn't an exact science. Millions of people who go the traditional route die. It's always the know-nothings who talk with such confidence of absolutes.

> also I heard he was a massive twat irl

Did you now? I guess it takes one to know one.

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It was widely documented at the time that Jobs chose non-medicine over medicine very soon after diagnosis, and then went through heroic real-doctor efforts once it was too late: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-j...

It's hard to take an article seriously when they write "was one of the 5% or so that are slow growing and most likely to be cured."

There is no cure for pancreatic cancer. There are people who survive it, but nobody knows why.

> and then went through heroic real-doctor efforts once it was too late:

If it was "too late" why did these "heroic real-doctor" exert any effort? Shouldn't they have known better? Being "heroic" and "real" doctors.

The guy chose to be a lab rat after his 9 months of "alternative medicine" and 5 years of "real medicine" failed him. These "heroic doctors" failed him just like the "unheroic doctors".

As I said, cancer isn't an exact science. People who think it is either know nothing of cancer or are just unthinking bootlickers. Hopefully one day we'll have a cure for cancer.

He was diagnosed with a gasteroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. Neuroendocrine cancers make ups about 5% of all pancreatic cancers, are slow growing and in many cases curable.

I understand the scepticism, but in this particular case is unwarranted.

I think one of the first things we need to adapt is calling it more than just "cancer" instead of something more descriptive. Like Alzheimer's, it's not actually "one" thing but many things together or separately are labeled with it. Each type of cancer can have its own cause, treatment, and prognosis.

Once we better recognize it's a family of ailments, the populace can better understand the challenges to its various treatments and how we need to invest more into it.

“Heroic” had a specific medical meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_measure

I wasn’t saying the doctors were heroic. I was saying the drastic measures to help him after he dicked around too long with fake healers meet the description.

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