Biographer Suggests Steve Jobs Might Be Alive Today Had He Not Pursued Alternative Medicine: VIDEO
In an interview to be aired Sunday on 60 Minutes, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson said that the Apple co-founder waited nine months before pursuing cancer treatment options that would have likely saved him. In that time he pursued alternative health treatments.
"I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking…we talked about this a lot...He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it….I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...
The book also detailed a 2010 meeting Jobs had with Obama, the HuffPost adds:
"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.
Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year...
...Though Jobs was not that impressed by Obama, later telling Isaacson that his focus on the reasons that things can't get done "infuriates" him, they kept in touch and talked by phone a few more times.
Watch Isaacson talk about Jobs and alternative medicine, AFTER THE JUMP...
The fact is that the overall survival rate for someone with pancreatic cancer is 5% after 5 years. Regardless of the speed of surgery or the methods of intervention, the odds of him being 'saved' were very small.
Mr. Isaacson should do more research before he speaks on something he obviously knows nothing about.
Posted by: Laura | Oct 21, 2011 8:21:01 AM
@LAURA
From Brian Dunning's article:
"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. "
(http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-succumbs-to-alternative-medicine/)
Posted by: sparks | Oct 21, 2011 8:26:31 AM
"regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for businesses to build factories here, so they go to China. Hmmmm. Would one of those costs be labor, Steve? As long as we're talking about "costs",
what about the suicides of chinese apple employees jumping off the roofs of their buildings due to inhumane working conditions and no hope for improvement? Oh wait, that was dealt with successfully when they installed nets around the buildings to catch the jumpers.
Problem solved!
Posted by: kodiak | Oct 21, 2011 8:29:35 AM
Oh, I forgot to mention that new hires at the chinese apple work camp must sign papers saying if they do commit suicide, apple is not at fault and no lawsuits can be brought by family members or pay outs to said members from lawsuits. Wait, isn't that falling into the "rules and regulations" category? Darnit, now I'm confused. So it's bad when rules and regulations protect the worker, but it's good when corporations protect themselves against the worker? Steve, I need some clarity here. Oh wait, you're dead.
Posted by: kodiak | Oct 21, 2011 8:38:08 AM
I thought the same thing immediately when I read he pursued "natural medicine".
Posted by: chad | Oct 21, 2011 8:42:07 AM
OK, we get it. Jobs was anti-union. Any union.
Posted by: Gus | Oct 21, 2011 8:44:05 AM
Arrogant jerks tend to get ahead. What else is new?
Posted by: ynot | Oct 21, 2011 8:50:07 AM
I am so tired of the beatification of Steve Jobs. He was a cut-throat business man and a showman. Period. Yes, he saved Apple, but he did not save the human race. Apple sells overpriced, shiny toys- and I say that as a former Apple fan boy for over a decade. Apple pays lower salaries than almost any other company in Silicon Valley, and this quote doesn't surprise me at all.
Posted by: Mike | Oct 21, 2011 9:20:33 AM
iPhones are made in China at a cost of labour of approx 50 cents /hour....yet an iPhone sells for around $500 and Apple has $40B in the bank.
somehow i doubt they ever had any read desire to manufacture in the USA at around $12/hour.
Posted by: oliver | Oct 21, 2011 9:28:00 AM
@Mike you hit the nail on the head - Beatification was the perfect word! So now we're going to hear all the wingnuts spinning this to all the Apple Fanboys... see we need to get rid of union, lower wages and get rid of those pesky regulations (including environmental). Of course these idiots will agree... the only problem will be they won't have the $$$ anymore to buy all those overpriced, shiny apple toys...
Posted by: MikeH | Oct 21, 2011 10:00:07 AM
Apparently Jobs hated Android because it 'stole Apples ideas' (which in itself is ironic given Apples tendency to 'borrow') and vowed to fight it with his $40Billion and his 'dying breath'. I wonder how that worked out for him?.. Oh wait.
Frankly while he did save the company he was an ass.
Posted by: rovex | Oct 21, 2011 10:20:28 AM
Perfect example of how just because someone can be knowledgeable, even brilliant, in one area, doesn't mean they have expertise (or even common sense) generally.
Posted by: Glenn | Oct 21, 2011 11:06:28 AM
Thankfully we don't have to ascribe to his ideas to use the products his company makes.
Posted by: Jesus | Oct 21, 2011 12:14:09 PM
Or use the products his company makes at all. Thankfully..
Posted by: Rovex | Oct 21, 2011 1:47:28 PM
Ynot, this is beyond "arrogant jerk."
More like sociopath. Which, by the way, is exactly what the behavioral profile of many corporations matches.
Posted by: redball | Oct 21, 2011 3:29:23 PM
While I'm sure delaying the surgery didn't help, there is little evidence to support that it killed him 'much' earlier than it would have otherwise. After his surgery, the tumor was cleared and he was in remission. His cancer came back, however, and was clearly aggressive and non-operable. That happens in many cases and could have happened whether he had the surgery earlier or not.
"Alternative medicine," as a replacement for real medicine, is something that should scare the bejeezes out of people, but it's not very likely in this case to have severely impacted the length of his life.
Posted by: Ryan | Oct 21, 2011 3:53:28 PM
His cancer was the slow growing type anyway. "Survival" in oncology is a metaphor for "time you spend in treatment before you die".
Posted by: anon | Oct 21, 2011 6:41:37 PM
Maybe it was Steve's death that steered me in the right direction, as I just ordered my first Apple product [ever!]- the iPhone 4S. Why? Unlike my PC computers, where I must routinely deal with errors for XYZ/something, I simply don't want to deal with the same for an Android phone (they're all different and so sporadically designed).
For the same $200, I got a beautiful looking phone (others are plastic!) that has a HUGE community and knowledge-base behind it. Quite frankly, it's just a phone, but if I'm going to pay $200 for any of them, I want the best one.
Before I call someone a "sheep" in the future, I'll learn a bit more about what influenced their decision.
Posted by: Drew | Oct 22, 2011 8:51:28 PM
yea u got that cheap swell fone over the bodies of dead chinese workers. o wow. neat.
jobs was feared like hell.
he was a known tyrant and ... when is enuf $$$ enuf...
mister secret man, what else did u hide.
im in the bay area, many whispers bout his escapades.
Posted by: chytnia | Oct 23, 2011 3:33:19 AM