Quote from tomahawk:
This is new and interesting information to say the least. Thanks FreeThinker for posting this.
What I have to wonder is could all those "routine" scans have had anything to do with Jobs getting the tumor in the first place? They say radiation damage usually takes years if not decades to result in a tumor, and I know CT scans are relatively safe, but you never know.
Quote from Free Thinker:
hard to say. these days they are warning about getting too many xrays at the dentist office because the damage is cumulative.
from what i have been able to find pancreatic cancer is heavily connected to smoking. i dont think steve smoked but but i found info that both his parents died of lung cancer from smoking so he was exposed young.
Quote from StarDust9182:
"it is useful to publicize the outcomes of people who go this route so others dont make the same mistake in the future."
So free thinking is to post one result and represent a conclusion from that. If that is indeed what your are doing, then I guess we can now rewrite the statistical handbook on quacks and perhaps add you to it. If not, then please present the evidence backing your claim independent of names.
Statistics rules the world, not you or I. It speaks to large numbers. Even then, counter cases exist - remember the black swan comments.
Let's get clear:
I am not judging his decision or even saying I disagree with your conclusion. I am concerned with you naming someone directly who has recently passed on. That is all.
Quote from tomahawk:
Interesting about the smoking history. Thanks. I am obsessed with finding causes with these things.
I was never a smoker, but my mother was, so this is a little disconcerting to me. She also died of lung cancer, after having quit 15-20 years earlier. There was some potentially costly treatment delay in her case too, so these are all lessons to be taken seriously.
Quote from Free Thinker:
i am too. i am the age where these types of things are starting to hit my circle of friends. it makes you stand up and take notice.
i also never smoked and hate it with a passion but two of my parents died from smoking so i was exposed as a child too.
You don't really sound like a "free thinker" ...Quote from Free Thinker:
Statistics are comprised of individual data points that need to be analyzed. the next person who finds themselves in steve jobs shoes will be bombarded by the sellers of quack cures who will denigrate the advice of those who work with it every day. he needs to know how the last person who took that route fared.
it is interesting that it takes the deaths of celeberties to get us to focus on these questions. steve jobs was just a man, flawed in many ways. had he had this very data in front of him when he made his decision things might have worked differently. we will never know.
Doctors are quacks too (medicine is not yet a real science, as weather forecast isn't either), their competence is on a bell curve, a surgeon's article is usually biased toward surgery, all medical cancer treatments weaken (read destroy) health and reduce the quality of life, 10 years or 8 years of survival is about the same and will vary from one individual to another, etc..