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kleinbl00  ·  4792 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The rationality of alternative medicine
This is an extremely dishonest article, one that puts forth the idea "any medicine that might possibly be labeled as alternative is bad" and one that states beyond a reasonable doubt that "steve jobs was killed by alternative medicine."

Some facts:

1) Steve Jobs was diagnosed with an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor in October 2003.

2) Steve Jobs attempted to treat his islet cell neuroendocrine tumor with diet until July 2004, when it became clear that his six months of treatment had little effect. Steve Jobs then underwent surgery.

3) Steve Jobs' tumor metastasized over the following five years, at which point he underwent a liver transplant in 2009.

4) Steve Jobs' metastasized cancer killed him in 2011.

So basically, Steve Jobs is "irrational" for delaying for six months the conventional treatment of a cancer described as "quite slow growing, or indolent. Even those that have been present for years, and in some cases decades, often stay safely confined to the pancreas. This kind of cancer can be so indolent that patients often die with it than from it. Although an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people in the US are diagnosed every year with neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas, autopsies find the disease in hundreds more." Even though the treatment involves

"removing the right side of the pancreas, the gallbladder, and parts of the stomach, bile duct, and small intestine."

Meanwhile, the prognosis before surgery was 10 years of life - he made it eight.

I think it's fascinating how many people are eager to condemn Steve Jobs for trying to treat a potentially benign condition with diet for six months and then having half of his insides removed when he was shown evidence it wasn't working. It demonstrates just how strongly people are willing to cling to dogma in the face of evidence that a man who was an avowed rawist pretty much did what his doctors told him to do as soon as there was proof positive that doing it his way wasn't working.

"mystic cult" indeed.