

Steve Jobs might have killed himself - gculliss
http://rt.com/usa/news/steve-jobs-cancer-dead-883/

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bradleyland
Both my uncle (a very close uncle) and my mother are living survivors of
cancer. My uncle had a tumor in his cerebellum, very near to his brain stem.
My mother had melanoma skin cancer on her left shoulder.

I can tell you that the way you deal with cancer (or any high-mortality
illness) is an incredibly personal decision. My mother is fortunate that she
caught the cancer early. A sub-2mm melanoma left here with a golfball sized
scoup of flesh missing from her shoulder.

My uncle has it far worse. The damage to his cerebellum and hippocampus means
that A) he can no longer balance using his inner ear mechanism, and B) he has
a difficult time developing new long term memories (yes, a lot like Memento).

I love my uncle so much it almost brings me to tears just talking about it,
but knowing what I know now, I'd have understood perfectly if he decided to
forego the radiation treatments that have literally caused his teeth to rot
out of his head. I'd have understood perfectly if he decided to forego the
debilitating chemo treatments that felt like (in the doctor's words) "a bad
case of heroin withdraw". I'd have understood perfectly if he decided to
forego the resulting divorce from his wife.

To say "cancer is a bitch" is a gross understatement. Even when you survive,
what lies on the other side is a great amount of uncertainty. My uncle
continues to be grateful for every day of his life, but I'd understand
perfectly if he weren't.

Our lives are the one thing that remain our own until the end. We all decide
how we'll live and die individually, and for our own reasons.

------
OpieCunningham
Had to laugh at this:

 _In a new report published in the Silicon Valley journal Quora_

A Q&A website is now a journal? And a post is now a published report?
Hilarious.

------
jrubinovitz
This is an awful title for an article.

~~~
garethsprice
The content is not much better either.

There should be a name for this flood of terrible linkbait articles that are
trying to tenuously link the author's pet opinion to the Jobsian halo.

Top 3 so far:

"Jobs the Conservative" (He owned a business, so forget about all that
Buddhist stuff and giving money to gay rights, he was a right wing
conservative dammit)

"Jobs the Philanthropist" (He may never have actually given much money to
charity, but by creating a huge business that provided jobs, some of those
people must have given money to charity, so he was possibly the greatest
philanthropist ever)

"Jobs the Suicide Case" (He possibly didn't immediately take the most drastic
medical advice available, and I hear he was into all that alternative medicine
stuff, so that must have meant he really killed himself probably)

------
LaGrange
No.

[http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/15/what-
kille...](http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/15/what-killed-steve-
jobs/)

~~~
bryanlarsen
It seems that both the title article and yours say exactly the same thing:
"Steve Jobs' might be alive today if he had the surgery immediately when it
was first recommended to him." The title article is very inflammatory. Your
link is much more balanced: cancer is a bitch, and it's impossible to know
anything about it with certainty.

But the difference between the two articles is purely style, not substance, in
my opinion.

------
tokenadult
Better commentary on the same issue (the actual underlying blog post by a
doctor and Steve Jobs fan cited by the blog linked to by LaGrange):

[http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-death-
of-s...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-death-of-steve-
jobs/)

------
FrancescoRizzi
Sadly, I'm waiting for someone to blame his cancer to the number of hours he
spent on the iPhone.

------
drallison
Bad title, a karma honeypot? The topic has been discussed frequently and
better elsewhere.

------
changhu
Stupid

------
jeffehobbs
Or, maybe not. Really hard to say with no possibility of ever knowing for
sure! So, stupid article is stupid.

------
michaeldhopkins
He had six months to live in 2003 so I doubt that 100% figure very much.

~~~
bunderbunder
It might have been if he had a normal pancreatic cancer, but, as has been
pointed out in numerous informed sources, islet cell carcinoma is very slow-
acting. His initial prognosis was presumably fairly good.

~~~
michaeldhopkins
You are right. I misremembered his Stanford speech.

